


Juggling Chainsaws

by MonsterGirlMelodies



Category: Ranma 1/2
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-05-18 23:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14862560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterGirlMelodies/pseuds/MonsterGirlMelodies
Summary: Post canon, taking place immediately following Nabiki's first semester in college. Nabiki returns home to find life in Nerima has hardly changed, but that her time away has shifted her perspective dramatically. A chance encounter between Nabiki and Ranma in the twilight hours of the morning sets in motion a series of changes to the lives of the Nerima Wrecking Crew.





	1. Chapter 1

The small hours. That brief period in between the late night club kids and the early risers. Where even the crickets and cicadas find pause in the still clarity of a twilight world. For the chosen few wandering about in such a night, senses heighten in a response to an unusual lack of input. Suddenly the world seems alive in a much different way, as if some abstract core is being given a stage to speak for itself.

Subtle voices on the wind, normally masked by the tidal forces of waking life.

Subtle voices in the mind, whispering strange truths in the dark.

A world for dreamers.

A world of dreamers.

\---

Ranma stood, clad in yellow pajama shorts, considering himself in the bathroom mirror. The house around him was silent save the occasional creak, groan, or buzzsaw-like exhalation from his unmistakably transformed father. But down here, even Genma's all too familiar snore was dampened. It made him feel alone with himself in a way his life seldom allowed.

In that moment.

He felt his mind clear as he noted the bags under his eyes.

He had the features of the chronically fatigued; the black smudged sunken look of a man whose face is trying to collapse in on itself. He knew it wasn't as simple as his father's snoring. Ranma had long since learned to sleep through that.

It was a world weariness. An over encumbered mass being crushed into an immobile state.

He tried to remember the last time he had real control over his own life. Control had always been something won, a victory from some conquest. Had it ever been more than fleeting? More than deception?

What he wanted and what he needed, he had no idea. He had too many balls in the air, and new ones kept getting thrown in from different angles. It wasn't even about if he wanted to juggle, it was about how much could he juggle. How fast could he go.

No one considering how dangerous the chainsaw or the flaming pins could be.

No one considering the man underneath the spectacle.

His eyes narrowed, blue slits pooling under spilling black void. His hands clenched and unclenched raggedly on the edges of the sink. He watched his bottom lip rise, he watched all of this, detached. Somehow behind his own eyes.

Ranma let out a quick sigh of hot air from somewhere deep within his chest, the mirror fogging, obfuscating the man among men within its confines. The man among men, among women, of woman, as woman.

Suddenly the door to the bathroom slid open. One Nabiki Tendo, clad in oversized pink pajamas, stared groggily into the bathroom from the darkened hall.

"Saotome, I know you all lived outside, but here in polite society we lock doors so this doesn't happen twice a day."

"Well maybe a polite society should learn to knock before throwin' doors open outta nowhere all the dang time." Ranma threw back.

"Sides, I wasn't doing nothing you'd wanna see in here anyway."

Nabiki cocked her head lightly, but otherwise continued into the room. "It's late, I'm not fully involved or invested right now. A lady just needs to pee and lay back down. So if you'd so kindly do nothing I'd wanna see elsewhere."

When he didn't immediately find his way out of the bathroom she ushered him with a exaggerated shooing gesture.

Ranma huffed a bit at that. Truthfully he was content to remove himself, the midnight spell over him now broken. The sanctity of the space somehow compromised even here in the fragile hours before dawn.

"Night Tendou."

\---

Nabiki softly padded down the hallway back to her room, humming to herself the idiot songs of those more half asleep than half awake. Dust hung in the air around her, alit by pale blue moonlight and warm orange street lamps. A starfield of skinflakes twinkling in the abyss. She was for a moment a fairy queen, clad in flowing pink silks, dancing among the stars.

She passed their living room, a spot usually so full of life and drama.

But now.

Inert.

Illuminated by darkness.

The reality of the space laid bare.

And there, the star of the show laid sprawled on his back, blue eyes piercing twin holes in the ceiling.

She was for a moment a moth to a flame.

Ranma didn't turn when she approached. He was as if a fixture of the room.

Nabiki rocked back into a seat, the patient eyes of a curious naturalist resting on the back of her hand.

They sat like that for a lifetime, the observer and the observed. Silent save the rhythmic ins and out of two breaths, occasionally syncopating, twisting in and out of harmony. Two souls in a helix, spinning down and down and up and up alongside one another.

The fairy queen seeking the riddle of the twin sapphires.

"What are you doing Saotome?"

Nabiki cut through the silence, careful on some subconscious level to keep her tone hushed, subdued. To save the sanctity of the space. To keep the thin bubble of the dreamworld from bursting.

"Being quiet." Ranma answered back with equal caution.

"I can see that." She said, turning herself in the plush seat into a reclining position. "What's on the ceiling?"

Ranma only shifted slightly at the remark, content to return to the previous moment.

The room shook as a panda tried to emulate a subwoofer tied to the front of a train.

Nabiki cocked an eyebrow.

"Can't sleep?"

"NO."

\---

Ranma's eyed remained fixed on the ceiling, but his ears opened to the sound of Nabiki sliding from her seat. He could hear the scuff of her feet against the floor as she moved alongside him. A hand found its way to his chest as he felt the tickling sensation of Nabiki's hair falling on his cheek.

"Nabiki what're you," Ranma found himself cut off as hot breath entered his ear, sending an electric jolt through his body in a crashing wave down his spine.

"Cause if you can't sleep, maybe there's something I could do to help?" Nabiki hushed into his ear. He felt himself shiver involuntarily, her words seeming to touch him as if by a light feather somewhere deep down inside his mind.

Ranma flew up and to the other end of the room with unprecedented speed. His hands shot up in a reflexive warding gesture as his mouth moved to speak, but found no words amidst his muddled brain. Nabiki eyed him from his previous spot, a smirk hovering in the dark by way of moonlight falling through the window.

"Jeez Mr. Man among Men, the witching hour got you spooked?"

Ranma's hands relaxed, but he remained subconsciously pushing himself back into the corner of the room.

Nabiki's form was fragmented into geometric patches by moonlight into an abstract painting of the girl who descended a staircase.

"I wasn't joking Ranma." She said flatly, her emotions betrayed only by her smile hovering in the night air in front of him. "I've got just what you need right now."

"For a price." he finished for her.

She leaned forward and the light raced across her features. "You look like crap Saotome. You looking like crap this past week likely has something to do with you sitting up all night. And now I'm sure there's a correlation between your attitude and Akane's equally abrasive response to it. Let's call this one a trade for some peace and quiet around here in our waking hours."

Ranma leaned back into the wall, his face masked in a dark fog. He let out a sigh from deep within himself.

"I don't think you have anything I want Nabiki."

"Just follow me up to my room Saotome." She moved herself over in his direction. Her hand playfully tugged at his pigtail as she passed.

Ranma paused as he listened to her ascend the steps in a delicate shuffle. For a moment he simply stared out the window at the hazy orange form of a streetlamp, it's dying bulb pulsing out an SOS signal in morse code. He padded lightly up the stairs, slipping through the night air. The fairy queen was cocked impatiently at the far end of the hall.

\---

Nabiki rummaged through a small chest of drawers off to the side of her bed. The tangled, recently vacated sheets stood in contrast to the tidiness of the rest of her space. The only source of light in the room was a small desk lamp, emitting a sharp white cone of light downward, casting the surface of the desk in harsh fidelity, but filling the room with only a cool grey glow, it's soft expanse stretching out to just beyond the doorframe, where Ranma posed disinterestedly.

"You can come in you know." she said over her shoulder.

Ranma snorted just loud enough for her to hear.

"You should know well as me. I step into another girls room after dark, and I'm getting knocked through the roof before I can get a decent explanation out to your sister."

"Oh but Ranma, I'm so infatuated with you." Nabiki mocked.

"Ain't bout how it is, it's bout how everyone always takes it." he muttered as he quieted into her inner sanctum.

"You know, even on this side of the house, that stupid Panda can keep me up at night on occasion." Nabiki began. "And sometimes it's like you're trying to outdo him in your sleep. I swear it's like fighting with each other has to be a 24/7 activity for you two."

She held out a small plastic packet the size of her palm. Inside were two soft cylindrical objects.   
"So I always keep something like this around. Cause you never know when an important night's sleep is going to count the next day."

Ranma made no move to take the offered package. She looked up at him in her usual flat stare, but he could see a hint of expectation there. Her eyes reflected the moon back at him from the window over his shoulder, her pupils becoming piercing white orbs dancing over shimmering liquid.

Nabiki sighed in mock exasperation. "They're ear plugs. For your ears. They cancel noise. We use these so we don't hate each other in the morning for what we do during the night."

"I know what they are Nabiki. Like I said, you ain't got anything I want."

As if on cue, the panda cut through the fog of night, and about a dozen layers of drywall. She held up and finger and returned to the drawers.

"I guess it would be a lot worse at the epicenter right, hold on I've got something else." Nabiki turned around beaming, holding an outrageously large pair of safety earmuffs.

"You can even use both at the-"

"It's not the damned panda Nabiki." He paused.

"Mostly. Whatever. Thanks anyway."

\---

Ranma extricated himself from the room, leaving a confused Nabiki Tendou to watch his back lumber down the hallway. Not toward his room, she noted, but back in the direction of the living room.

She closed up the drawer and her door and slid back under her sheets, content to let Ranma's problems be Ranma's problems. Fitfully she tried to unburden her mind and return to the peaceful land of relaxation she luxuriated in as much as time allowed.

But sleep would not come. The world outside her bed seemed so loud, itchy, hot, distracting. Hellbent on keeping her from escaping from it. She tossed and turned and kicked off her pajamas and tangled with the sheets and readjusted her pillow, but still her vision remained a black wall behind her eyelids whose veil wouldn't lift into the land of dreams.

She had been gone the past year from the drama and dynamics of Nerima's constant chaos. Had thought herself removed from the equation, able to come back as nothing more than a temporary observer. A fly on the wall, no longer seeking the rewards that came from catalyzing and orchestrating the misadventures of those around her. Perspective had given her new worries and challenges, personal projects that had nothing to do with a ragtag group of idiot pubescent super humans.

Her work, for her.

Somewhere in the house a faucet dripped.

A clocked ticked.

A panda snored.

"Goddamnit Soatome."

\---

She found him again, on his back on the table, staring up at the ceiling, unfocused eyes watching the ceiling fan turn round and round in a lazy rhythm. He was lit by moonlight streaming in from the windows, a cool blue only occasionally interrupted by the warm orange of a malfunctioning street lamp bouncing between life and death.

"Nabiki just quit it okay?"

His voice cut through the quiet of the night like a whip. His eyes never left the ceiling.

She was unwavering.

"Are you aware of what a cry for help is Saotome?"

To that she received no reply save a minor shifting of his body.

"Because right now, that's what you're doing. Maybe to you you're just staring off into space in the dark in the middle of the night, but to any thinking feeling human being you're sending off a red flag yelling 'help, somethings bothering me!'"

Ranma audibly scoffed as she made to sit by his side on the table.

"Since when does the Ice Queen give a damn about anything that ain't tied to dollars and cents? You wanna talk about someone acting weird?"

His words bit at her, although she knew she couldn't exactly blame him. She'd spent most of the time they'd known one another exploiting him in one way or the other, and although she had certainly justified her reasons, trust was the last thing she expected from him.

"Look, I know how the dynamic between us has been with us, and I know a lot of it has been my fault-"

"A LOT of it?"

"Most of it."

He titled his head slightly, giving the barest of nods in her direction.

"Let me be real. I don't know if a full apology is something I'm capable of. Keeping this house afloat and saving for college when no ones working and we've got two freeloaders literally tearing the walls down every other day." She sighed. "Maybe, well maybe I had to compromise my sense of morals or ethics."

Ranma snorted out a laugh. A sick unnatural thing.

"Maybe you got off on it."

She could feel the contempt in his voice. Here SHE was, trying to console HIM, irony of ironies.

"...maybe I did." She said in a small voice, just barely enough to carry the few feet between them in the empty room.

Her words seemed to hang in the air, floating through moonbeams among the star fields of dust and panda fur. For a moment Ranma's blue eyes just pierced through her, unblinking.

"Who are you and what have you done with Nabiki Tendou?" There was a measured level of exhaustion in his voice along with the statement. If he'd meant it as a joke she wasn't reading it.

"Excuse me?"

"My words, not yours. What's your angle?"

"What makes you think I've got an angle Saotome?"

Ranma was looking visibly irritated. "PLEASE, just once. I got nothing ya can wring out. Let me have the night and we can start the usual crap in the morning."

She frowned inwardly. This was, ultimately, warranted.

"Ranma, let me tell you a story." She began quietly.

Ranma slowly sat up and moved to exit out the back door.

"Please." She watched his back tense as he stopped and leaned against the frame.

"I think if anyone knows what it's like to be a big fish in a small pond it's you. Because I've watched you. Over and over in your martial arts bubble of the world, you've risen to and surmounted every challenge thrown at you. All these big fish and not one has ever been bigger than you."

She collected herself, running through her first semester at university in her mind.

"Well, I know that feeling too. In my own bubble world, I was the big fish, the queen bitch of Nerima ward. Even in all this chaos I always felt in control, safe. Over the years, I'd gotten my hands on all the strings I could pull, and it was like I could play this place like a puppet."

He shifted to a sitting position back on the table, facing away from her.

The fan above hummed in a slow steady rhythm. It joined the faint ticking of a clock in the other room and the deep sound of the boy breathing next to her.

"I guess, here at least, there really weren't any serious challenges for me, not in my bubble." She let out a hollow chuckle. "I'd never even considered that there could be."

"The school of business was full of people just like me. All of us sure we were there to run the joint. All of us used to running things. I'm sure there were many with more perspective than that, a lot of people fell in line into subservient roles pretty quick, but some people" she tapped the table with the knuckle of her index finger, "some people were too bullheaded to back down right away and fill the roles they were meant for."

She paused to collect herself, watching his back rise and fall in a lazy night rhythm.

"Those were the ones that got hit the hardest by the people destined to take hold." Her voice caught just ever so slightly, and maybe it was the stillness of the night, but somehow it failed to escape the attention of a seemingly distant Ranma Saotome.

"You finally got gamed, didn't ya?" He twisted his body toward her, settling into a cross legged position on the table. His face was an impassive mask.

"Yeah."

"Hard."

Her face gave away more than the words she couldn't form.

"It hurts don't it? When someone abuses your trust?"

Somewhere in the distance came the sound of a train, likely the last run of the night.

"Ranma I-"

"Didja get em back?"

She leaned heavily over her knees, her bangs hanging over her eyes.

"At first, I thought...I thought I did. I was Nabiki Tendou, ice queen, I didn't lose. I controlled the flow of the world around me."

She knew she was being intentionally vague. She knew Ranma, as naive as he was, still probably held reservations about believing her.

"Listen, when I go back after the break, if I go back after break. I think I'm leaving the school of business."

"WHAT!?" Ranma erupted and then quickly darted his head side to side scanning to be sure he hadn't destroyed the careful sanctity of the night.

More quietly he followed. "Nabiki what the hell happened?"

She considered spilling the whole story. How she'd learned first hand what it meant to violated and sold to the highest bidder. How it had felt like fighting against the sea, and with each passing week she lost the strength to keep her head above water.

How she'd eventually drowned in shark infested waters.

"Ranma. I found a black mirror, a whole hall of them, that finally allowed me to see myself for who I truly was. How everyone back home must have seen me. And I didn't like it…"

Even in the dim twilight of the room her eyes stood out wet and glassy.

"And I didn't think mom would like it." The choke in her voice was almost masked by the backfire of a passing truck, but it was there.

She'd spent a lot of time evaluating the lessons her first semester away from home had taught her, initially trying to remain detached, calculating, cold. It wouldn't do to show any emotion in the face of her new adversaries, and she could never know when they were watching.

It felt like they were always watching.

Waiting for the chance to exploit a momentary weakness in her guard.

Her routine had become an exhaustion of convoluted movements, paranoid thinking and extreme isolation.

She had come eventually to view her brief time away from the school of business fulfilling her 'wasteful' gen ed requirements as a sort of sanctuary. For a brief few hours of the week, across campus in the school of arts, surrounded by lax and carefree peers processing photo negatives, she felt relief. She could fill her hard edge, dial down her paranoia, laugh and lean on others without having to tense for the impending drop when they pulled out from under her.

But then it was back to the dorms and the school of business. A repeated and voluntary leap into a shark tank. Where she had to put on a mask and move through the halls alone. To pretend she couldn't feel the stares or hear the snickers at the girl who had tried to lead so hard that she wasn't now deemed even fit to follow.

She hadn't allowed herself to speak much of the pain of the experience out loud, and she doubted she ever would. Certainly she never anticipated to address even this much with Ranma of all people. All the while she sat there running through it all in her head, she hadn't felt him come up next to her. Hadn't felt the hot tears slide slowly down her cheek as she stared emptily at the weaving of the mats on the floor.

She felt a strong arm encircle her and looked up to see piercing blues looking sympathetically down at her. His free hand brushed a tear from her cheek and he held it up to his face, cocking an eyebrow at her.

"It don't freeze to your skin now does it?" A playful grin.

Without thinking she encircled his chest with her arms, laying her head against it, her face turned down away from his. "No Saotome, I suppose they don't." She breathed into him, feeling the hot liquid now streaming down her face, soaking into his tank top and dripping rhythmically from her chin onto her own pajama bottoms.

For a time they sat together in silence, two silhouettes against a blue grey room, it's background only occasionally giving way to a heartbeat of amber light.

Slowly.

After an immeasurable amount of time.

Nabiki felt her composure begin to return to her.

"I thought you were terrified of women Saotome." A statement, an observation of his uncharacteristic proximity to her female form.

"Psssh, no! I ain't scared of nothin'." And yet, despite his quick protest, she felt his entire body suddenly stiffen. Felt his hand lift up off of her shoulder to hover several inches above it.

"I suppose you'd rather I believe that you have the self control of a saint." She untangled herself from his rigid form and watched bemused as his tension almost instantly released.

"I'm not dead inside either you know. It's helpful to put up a front sometimes. Ain't it?"

She affirmed the statement with a nod, then cocked her head to signal him to continue.

"Back on the road I definitely used to think bout what it might be like to uh...be with a girl or whatever. Just we didn't really meet too many, and when we did it didn't last long fore Pops got us chased outta town. Sides, Pop never wanted me ta have any distractions from the art. Till we got here that is."

Nabiki chuckled at him. "So you do like girls Saotome? I'd have never guessed." Truthfully she'd had money on it at one point, but he'd certainly left enough room for doubt to get a pool going.

"Course I like girls!" He started, then quickly seemed to fall into himself. "It's just...it's like it's this whole, I don't know how-"

"It's complicated isn't it?"

"Right like-"

"Being attracted to women AND men?"

"What!? No damnit that's not-"

She waved her hand dismissively and doubled over herself laughing. "RELAX Saotome, I'm just messing with you. I know what you mean, at least I think I do."

He glared at her, but deflated quickly. "I ain't never had an opportunity to try and like, be with a girl or date or all that stuff. Heck! Wasn't even something I really learned how to handle."

"Then you came here and-"

"Blam! Straight to marriage. And of course it had to be more than one. Just to make things interestin." Absently he rocked back onto the table to stare at the eternally spinning fan again. 

"So outside of what I'm already well informed about the past year and a half, you've never?"

"Nope. Prolly spent more time with my own girl form than I had any chick my own age." He paused. "Guess Ukyos the exception, thought she was a guy at the time though, and I was a kid so I'd never have thought bout any of that stuff."

"Just what stuff do you think I'm talking about Ranma?"

He regarded her seriously. "Ya know, like holding hands or kissing and junk."

She almost fell over from the sheer force of his naivety. "That's a start. You really were sheltered weren't you?"

"Christ Nabiki I know what s-se...sex, I know what sex is. Shampoo alone probably did better than health class to fill me in. Plus, I got all the parts, wasn't hard to work things out."

Even in the dim light she could see him blushing head to toe, as much as he was attempting to maintain a nonchalant posture to his body.

"What about now? Have you...done anything? With any of them?"

She heard him sign deeply, saw a eddy of dust motes roll through the air above him.

"No. I mean sometimes they try and maybe that counts. Specially to Akane. But, it ain't really the same if it's forced on you. If you don't feel like you can do nothing in response."

"And what's to stop you from...responding?" She accented that last word with a wry smile.

He regarded her with a dumbstruck look. "You're not serious? Cause I do anything that sends a positive response to one of 'em, immediately they got marriage bells ringing and I got a half dozen people out for my head."

"But you would right?"

He leveled her with a flat stare. "Nabiki, you gotta promise to hold this, cause I don't need no more drama alright?"

She nodded, holding her pinky out to his. He grasped it with his own.

"I'm surrounded by girls with almost as much training in the thing I love most in the world as I do. Every single one of them is a knock out in their own way. Yes. I would. With any of them."

Nabiki let out a low whistle. "Wow Saotome, you really do have some serious self control."

"But I can't act on crap, and I can't go looking round for some other chick with less hang ups either less I wanna get a whole bunch a people hurt. Not the least of which is me."

"I can't believe you're almost eighteen and still so inexperienced. I just figured, you know, you'd figured something out secretly. There were always quite a number of girls buying the shots of Ranma-kun." She ran her eyes up and down his prone form. "Such a waste."

Ranma bristled at the mention of the voyeur pictures she'd always seemed to have an infinite supply of. "Oh what, like I ever saw you getting all handsy with some dude."

"A lady doesn't kiss and tell Ranma-kun." She winked.

"What really? But you were always so...um so-"

"Cold? Here in Nerima sure. But I had my fair share of experience away from prying eyes." She gave him a look and finished huskily, a humorous contrast to the lumpy pajamas attiring her. "Certainly more than you could ever dream of."

He seemed to consider her for a moment, debating within himself.

"What does...what does love feel like?"

She laughed involuntarily.

"What!? I'm serious. I mean I know, or like I think I know but-"

"I have no idea Saotome. Truly."

"But you just said,"

"No see, here is the problem with the lot of you. Do you think the rest of us just spot one another on the street, yell out 'I love you, you will be mine!' and then rampage around the city trying to get someone to bend to our will?"

His silence was more answer than she'd ever need.

"Oh my god, you do, don't you!?"

"Well what the hell do people do then huh?!" He was cute when he was put on tilt like this, she had to admit.

"First step, I'll lead alright." She smiled inwardly. "Saotome-kun I think you're cute, do you think I'm cute?"

"What!? No! I mean sure, but not like-"

"Just play along, GOD. Don't burst a blood vessel. So that's step one. Then I say something like 'maybe we should spend time alone together doing something fun.' and you say."

"Sure?"

"And after we do that we decide, mutually, whether to engage one another physically. From there it's just escalation. That's it."

"So when do you fall in love?"

"I don't know."

He face faulted.

"So you've never?"

"No, but I've certainly enjoyed the company of a man for an extended period of time."

"What's the point then?"

She leaned forward and knocked him lightly on the forehead. "The point is you enjoy the journey dumbass. And IF it gets to that point you let it, but if it doesn't it's no big deal so long as you had a good time."

"And they did too?"

"Ideally. But not everyone's a winner."

"You make it sound so simple."

"IT IS simple Ranma. It's the whole Wrecking Crew that's got it all twisted. You all go from zero to one hundred with just about everything you do. You're all so preoccupied with the end goal you forget to even have the damned adventure that gets you there."

"Even if you're right-"

"I am."

"It's not really a way I can be anyways. S'all been decided for me already."

"Oh yeah? And I suppose that means you've made a decision?"

"I thought I had."

"Akane?"

"I thought maybe I was ready to just do it, get married. Thought I…"

"Loved her."

He nodded. "But after it all went to hell," she grimaced at her part in that fiasco. "Well, we kinda just went back to the way things were. After everything we been through. It still just don't feel like the trust is there, and I feel like maybe that's important."

Nabiki laughed and lay down on her back next to him, catching sight of the fan behind moonbeams. 

"You're not as dense as you look."

"You're not as hard as you look."

"Touché."

Up in the night sky a patch of clouds moved to obscure the moon, filling the room with dark shadows. Two voices whispered in the void, their forms only briefly alighting under the amber glow of an unsteady streetlamp.

"But I been thinking. Bout love I guess. Like I hate Pops, but I love him too. I know what that feels like. I know what loving moms is like. It's like, is how I feel about Akane any different? And if it's not, what does that mean?"

"Ranma, as far as I'm concerned, the only major difference between platonic love and romantic love- and by the way that's what you're getting at -the only real difference is if you want to get in there pants too."

She heard him croak next to her. She could swear she felt the heat from the blush overtaking him.

"But what if you feel like that for more than one person?"

"I don't know, you're probably querying the wrong source. BUT, I'd say you probably just go for the one that feels the strongest and hope for the best."

"Hmmm"

"This is why most people play the field and let things develop organically by the way."

"Maybe I oughta just let mom go through with that damn seppuku pledge..."

Nabiki found herself hovering over his face in an instant.

"Don't you dare talk like that you moron!"

His hands flew up in a warding gesture. "Relax, I'm just kidding. Just feel...stuck, is all."

She couldn't be sure how far Ranma’s warped and overwhelming sense of honor could really take him, but she certainly didn't find the line of thought entertaining.

"What if you could start over Ranma? If you had all the opportunities you have now, but without all the honor and laws and, frankly, utter bullshit hanging over it all?"

The clock chimed lightly signaling the passing of another twilight hour. Crickets played against the sound of light traffic somewhere far away.

"I'd live my life. I don't know how I'd live it, but I'd live it for me."

There was no doubt to the sincerity his voice carried through the darkness.

"Maybe there's something I could do to help."

"Yeah?"  
She clasped his hand in hers, surprised again to find he didn't immediately recoil or tense in response.   
"Yeah Saotome. I think I owe you one."

He eyed her with childlike curiosity all of a sudden. "Do you really think I'm cute?"

She was momentarily taken aback by the sudden change in gears. He was full of surprises tonight.

"I don't know Saotome, do you really think I'm cute?" Turnabout was certainly fair play.

He responded without his usual blathering knee jerk, rather cooly fixing eye contact with her. "I do."

It was her turn to be put on tilt. Suddenly she was all too aware of their physical proximity, her hand in his, her face hovering over his, the way his blue eyes shone through her even in this dull twilight world. "And if it weren't for all the nonsense running your life...would you?"

"Start over with a fresh slate. Try and see something new in people I didn't see before."

She felt herself as if getting pulled into him, descending down. Her hand still gripped his, but it was now held in a position over his head as she shifted her weight toward him. She felt a hand brush the small of her back, felt his slow heavy breath brushing against her cheek.

Felt the crash as a half drunk, half asleep ball of panda fur careened down the steps after miscalculating it's lumbering journey to the kitchen.

Ranma and Nabiki found themselves staring at one another from opposite sides of the living room, eyes racing back and forth between the once again unconscious panda and one another's bewildered faces.

"I think it's time for me to go to bed."

"Yeah right, me too."

She manuevered herself cautiously around the furry stinking form at the bottom of the stairs. She watched Ranma prepare to vault his way on to the overhang below his room. His eyes were warm but intense as they met hers one last time.

"Hey...Nabiki?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks. Really."

"Right back at you Ranma-kun."

\---

Notes from the author:

Thank you so much for reading! This is my first attempt at Ranma fanfic, although I've certainly read a lot of them. Reviews and all that are appreciated. I'm not 100% sure where this is going yet, but I do have two more chapters already written following this one that I can clean up.


	2. Chapter 2

The sky broke open into a stream of yellow ochre, washing it’s way down over the world of dreamers below. As it did, a faint hum began to build, the collective rumble of myriad organisms returning to the world, becoming a part of the background canvas that waking life would use to paint it’s days. 

Ranma woke in a tangle of bed sheets, pillows, and clothes to the first warm light of dawn rolling it’s way across his body. Beside him, the still rumbling form of his father glowed black and gold bathing in a rectangle of morning sun. 

Downstairs he could already hear the faint graceful rhythm of Kasumi’s morning routine. A regularity of gentle sounds catalyzing patterns into form throughout the household. Soon Akane’s alarm would sound. The faint smell of cigarette smoke would drift through his window from a bleary eyed Soun Tendo out on the porch. After a time, Nabiki would lumber out of her room and turn her sister’s alarm off, waking the other girl in the process. A cheerful Kasumi would spot the middle sister and declare that coffee was almost ready. 

He wasn’t exactly sure what happened next. The patterns of the Tendo household in the morning were rather static, as was his own part in the routine. As such he’d only observed so much enough to establish it’s form before being thrown into an unsolicited bath in the koi pond.

For a moment, watching the rise and fall of the bear’s chest, it crossed his mind to use this golden opportunity to get the drop on his old man. It seemed like such a shame to break the quiet moment gifted to him. That he should have to consider it a gift.

Down the hall he heard the dim sound of Akane’s alarm clock going off. It joined the birds outside in a high pitched orchestra working itself into a crescendo. And just before it could crash, the fumbling sleepwalker steps of one middle Tendo on a groggy warpath. 

It was as he heard the door to the youngest daughter’s room slide open that Ranma rose into a standing position quietly and calmly. Genma made no move save the heavy up and down of his burly furry chest. 

Maybe today he could finally see where the pattern went.

He slid quietly out the door and into the hall with the grace of a ghost. Down a ways, he could see a disheveled and bleary eyed Nabiki shambling out of her sister’s door, the door sliding shut behind her as she slid forward. 

He smiled to himself at the sight of her. The cowlicks in her hair were washed by solid rays of sunflower yellow. If her eyes were normally set half lidded, then they were three quarters so this morning. She seemed to look through him on her way back to her own door, her weary brain only processing immediately relevant and expected information.

Somewhere in the distance the sound of an enterprising neighbor starting up a lawnmower. The soft sound of running water in the house piping as Kasumi began filling the furo. A tea kettle began ringing from the kitchen.

“Oh Nabiki! Coffee is almost ready!”

“Tanks Sumi.”

It wasn’t until she was nearly upon him that her eyes opened in recognition, the hazy film of sleep dissolving as they focused on the boy in front of her. 

“Saotome?”

“Mornin’.” His smile was as warm as golden light bouncing over her hair.

“Shouldn’t you be in the pond?”

“Not this morni-” 

His guard down, he never had the chance to notice the furry arm moving up behind him. Ranma found himself taking in the sights of an idyllic Neriman morning as his trajectory led him to that all too familiar pond. It was a shame, the way the koi lit up near the water’s surface, it was picturesque, but fleeting. 

A topless redhead shot like a dart from the depths of the pond into a flying kick at a panda waiting at it’s edge. 

“Imma turn you into a rug when I’m done with you old man!”

And so routines continued on as they did.

\---

Nabiki hid a bemused grin behind a mug of black coffee as the damp and decidedly exposed fireball of energy plopped down at a seat across from her at the table.

“Not one for modesty today are we?”

Ranma-chan arched back, thumbing at her chest. “Ain’t nothin modest about these.”

From the kitchen Kasumi’s voice called out cheerily. “Ranma, please make sure to get dressed before breakfast!”

“Yes Kasumi!” Ranma replied. Followed low and mostly to herself, she added. “Don’t see what the big deal always is. Everyone here always seeing everyone’s everything anyway.” 

Nabiki watched the back end of Ranma’s everything trudge off toward the bathroom, impressed and more than a little bit jealous of how the small fabric of her shorts clung dangerously to the girl’s backside. Akane and the small girl crossed paths, causing Akane’s eye to roll at her half dressed housemate. Ranma responded by sticking her tongue out, but the potential conflict failed to escalate, both parties having played out this particular butting of heads enough to let it roll off of them.

“Can you believe that pervert?” Akane said to no one in particular, taking her seat. Her words came out with more routine than they did malice. 

Nabiki couldn’t help but notice the statement was made with her younger sisters eyes intently taking in the half dressed redheads retreating form.

—

Soon the usual suspects were all gathered around the table, eating and chatting. Ranma now fully clothed and fully male. All in all it was a typical scene playing out in a typical way, save one minor detail that would go unnoticed by all but the keenest observer.

Two sets of eyes flitted to meet one another, periodically, as if this morning seeing each other for the very first time.

For their part, Ranma and Nabiki were doing their very best impressions of being the same people they had been the previous day.

With the dawn of the new day Ranma had felt like a different person. Like some threshold had been crossed in the small hours the night before. Some new paradigm taken hold unbeknownst to all but two at the table around him. 

Suddenly he couldn’t look at the girl across the table from him the same way. Where before she had been merely a fixture of his days, blending into the background as the chaos of life swept him up, now he realized just how very human the brunette sitting across from him was. Her mask was still there, but in those brief moments that their eyes met, he thought he could see through it to the woman he had met the night before.

The two took an uncharacteristically long time finishing the meal in front of them. Before long, it was only they that remained, the rest of the household having moved on to find what the day had in store for them.

Ranma knew he wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t form in his mind. Something to confirm that the dreamlike exchange of the previous night had been real. That the change he felt in himself, that he’d seen in her, that he could realize the evolution of new paradigms moving forward. In lue of finding the words, he methodically picked at the remains of the food in front of him as the furtive glances exchanged between the two escalated into a staring contest.

Her eyes viewed him inquisitively behind her heavy bangs. Not the same predatory curiosity he had grown so accustomed to, but something brighter. There was humanity in that look, where before there had only been analysis. He’d never noticed how bright the whites of her eyes before, how much they contrasted with the deep dark depths of her pupils.

Suddenly he felt a light kick underneath the table. He was caught by a small smile from the girl. With a quick nod of the head toward the stairs and a flick of the eyes upward she extricated herself from her seat and moved to deposit her plate in the kitchen.

Ranma felt a warmth at that somewhere in the lower part of his stomach as he considered the thought of meeting the older girl upstairs. Alone. Free to whisper quietly to one another again. Free to see through and tear down walls together.

It felt strange, and in a way it felt wrong. He had no idea how to process the feelings he was having toward the last person on Earth he’d have ever guessed to share his secrets or vulnerabilities with.

He watched her saunter away, her hips seeming to swing in a come hither motion, contained by small denim shorts. Normally a keen observer of human motion, Ranma now wondered whether he was reading something common that he’d never noticed before. Or was this somehow directed at him. Had he finally let a crack form in a wall he’d built, and was the torrent being unleashed now coloring his perceptions?

When he saw her long legs emerge from the kitchen he started to get up, a feeling of warm anticipation building inside of him. She cast a sidelong glance his way.

“Oh Nabiki! If you’re not busy today would you mind running out and finding a few things for me?”

Nabiki pivoted to address Kasumi and Ranma slumped back down in his seat.

—

Ranma-chan spotted Nabiki from the rooftop. It had taken her forever to shake Happosai this time. The old lech had appeared almost as soon as the thought had entered Ranma's head to track down the middle daughter. 

The miniscule pervert extraordinaire would be halfway to the moon by now. She hoped.

Nabiki's arms were full with a collection of bags containing groceries and household odds and ends. Her pace was a slow careful stride as her eyes scanned a neatly written list on a cutesy tanuki stationary sheet. 

She startled just slightly as the smaller girl dropped lightly from the sky, landing in a casual stride next to her to match her pace.

“Ya need a hand with any of that?” Ranma questioned, leaning over herself with a bemused look on her face.

Nabiki hefted the bags assessing their weight, but made no move to transpose them to the other girl. 

“I think I’m more than capable Saotome. Besides,” she motioned up the block, “I’d rather they get back home in one piece.”

The redhead cocked her head slightly at the response.

On cue a cry rang up through the empty street. 

“SAOTOME PREPARE TO DIE!”

Without pause, Ranma deftly flipped through the air and on to the roof of a passing car heading in the opposite direction. She was followed shortly by a buzzing swarm of yellow and black bandanas.

Nabiki's pace remained unaltered by the display as a red faced and road weary Ryoga Hibiki rushed past her. 

Without breaking stride the lost boy cocked a smile and a nod in her direction, issuing a quick “Morning Nabiki,” before disappearing after the car and over the horizon.

“We must be running out of soy sauce.” She said to herself, returning to the list in her hand.

—

Ranma, now decidedly male, damp, bruised, and scuffed, shuffled through Nerima’s market district. He’d lost Ryoga after a long winding chase, the lost boy managing to keep pace with it’s panicking driver. 

A busted fire hydrant. It was impressive really. Ryoga had lost his balance when the car took an unexpected ninety degree turn and tumbled into it. That the lost boy could carry enough force even in a fall to crumple a hunk of metal like that. Admirable.

He’d left P-Chan bouncing atop the geyser he’d created. Ranma’s volunteer schaufer came to an abrupt stop as the redhead waved her transformed friend off. Luck and momentum sent the girl careening away from the vehicle and straight through a conveniently situated carwash. No need to find hot water today. Thank the gods.

Ranma absently flicked bits of turtle wax from his forearm. His form was hunched forward as his eyes kept a steady but unfocused lock straight ahead of himself. The serious expression on his face contrasted comically with the bubbles periodically escaping his nose.

“I swear he won’t be happy till this whole damn town is a crater.” He mumbled to himself, feeling his stomach begin to signal the need for fuel to a low burning fire. 

The smell of fatty meat on a hot surface carried the boy unconsciously in a bee line through the bustling market. 

\---

Nabiki turned the corner to find the heir Saotome wrist deep in several bowls of fatty ramen. The boy had clearly entered some small part of nirvana, a flurry of motions all designed to consume as quickly and efficiently as possible, performed in the unconscious faultless rhythm of a kata practiced for a lifetime. His unfocused eyes at first glossed over her arrival, his body content to keep its equilibrium. After one too many passes over her, they finally bulged in recognition of her arrival, as he choked, then gulped down one last bite.

Both paused, waiting for the other to speak, their eyes dancing over one another. The air held the crackle of fatty pork on a griddle, the lumbering tones of boiling stock pots, a dull background chatter washing through the scene in a dull wave. 

His mouth dropped open as if to break the stand off, followed soon by his hand raising a steaming soup bowl to his mouth. His eyes never broke contact as he sipped and then eventually poured the contents down his throat.

The girl with the pageboy cut raised on finger as if to tell the boy off, but after a pause shifted ninety degrees and casually walked off.

Ranma dug into his pocket as he used his remaining hand and a free leg to tip and kick the contents of two last bowls into his gaping maw. He slapped a small wad of bills he hoped was enough onto the table’s surface and rose quickly to follow the middle Tendo.

Only to be annihilated from nowhere by a purple missile. 

“Ranma!” the Amazon exclaimed, pinning his startled form to the ground as the acclimated Nerima crowd parted to move casually around their spectacle. “You take Shampoo on date yes?”

Before the imobile youth could think to respond he watched the girl above him turn her head to the piles of empty bowls on his table, then back to the large stain Kasumi would have to scrub out of his shirt collar. A double take. A triple. By the fourth and final turn back to face him the exuberant girl’s face had darkened, her mouth upturned.

“If Airen want ramen, why no ask for Shampoo?” She huffed.

A good question, actually. The boy his father raised briefly pined for the stack of bills needlessly spent. However, once again, his potential to articulate himself was cut off.

“How dare you besmirch Shampoo’s honor!” 

A chain snaked rapidly and unknowingly toward the girl in question. Shampoo quickly removed herself from Ranma, flipping up and around the weapon like a gymnast as it buried itself in a nearby watermelon.

“Stupid Mousse! You almost hit Shampoo!” 

From nowhere in particular, the fiery warrior produced two bonbori and rocketed at the blind boy in robes. 

Ranma, attempting to circumvent any further conflict, rolling his way to his feet and toward a heavy moving crowd. 

From his robes, Mousse furnished a oversized shield to deflect the incoming object of his affection’s fury. Senses keener than his aim would suggest, his opposite sleeve unleashed a torrent of bladed chains at his retreating adversary.

Watching the torrent of weaponry approaching, it occured to Ranma that he could avoid every last projectile by doing nothing at all. Further review, however, had him tracing the paths of the deadly weapons into the crowd of innocent bystanders behind him. He growled in frustration. 

“You tryin’ to kill someone today Duck-boy?!” 

“Yeah, you!” The blind boy remained oblivious to his mistake, trying as he was to maintain the integrity of a crumpling tower shield under heavy onslaught.

Ranma’s body became a flurry of movement as he reached amaguriken speeds in a desperate attempt to deflect the incoming barrage. 

Like popcorn, three hanging lanterns exploded in succession as they became impaled by bladed chains. Through a momentary gap in the crowd another stretched it’s way into the side of a sandwich board advertising takoyaki. The taught line created a clothesline that tripped up a small hand full of unaware passersby. Yet another, Ranma managed to intertwined his forearm with, gaining a leverage over the long haired idiot. 

Nabiki watched dumbstruck, stuck inside an increasingly panicky crowd, as one unaccounted blade shot in a beeline toward the center of her vision. Watched it’s point glint in the sun, took in the details of the object in a timeless space as it seemed to inch it’s way toward her. She wondered if all of his weapons had such beautiful engravings down their length. Her eyes screwed shut even as her body failed to move. 

She felt a light pin prick, cold, against her forehead. 

And nothing more.

The world rushed forward back into it’s normal pace. Ranma held a knife by the blade just in front of her eyes. Blood dripped from between his closed fist. He held a sheepish grin that quickly shifted to a look of angry determination as his head cocked toward the blind boy still deflecting strikes from his lavender haired goddess.

“Sorry, I owe ya one.” Was all he said before taking off full tilt into the fray.

The pigtailed boy’s sprint transformed into a slide neatly between Mousse’s legs, his hands still in possession of two lengths of chain. The blind amazon found himself pulled face down into the ground by the arms as Ranma emerged behind him, giving a hearty yank of both chains. 

“How ya gonna keep that guard up with your eyes closed Duck-boy?” Ranma mocked before reeling back and unleashing a mighty open handed slap to Mousse’s open backside. 

The crowd flinched as the concussive force rocketed like a supersonic burst from it’s epicenter. Birds launched skyward as car alarms sounded in the distance. Dogs near and far launched into a group outrage as the crowd held its collective breath.

Mousse raged to his feet, red faced and faltering slightly.

“RAAANMMA!”

His face turned a deeper shade of red at the sight of his one true love doubled over one of the tables nearby in laughter. 

“Unlike you, I can hit the broad side of a barn.” Ranma said with a wink over his shoulder and a mock slap to his own derriere. He launched a path skyward, away from the market and onto the the ward’s rooftops.

He was followed shortly by Mousse, with several more hidden weapons embedding themselves harmlessly into walls below him. Not long after Shampoo was able to stifle her giggling, resolutely giving chase to the pair with an wild grin on her face.

Nabiki remained fixed to her position, trying to maintain the public composure she worked so hard to build in the face of everyday insanities. Her hand moved to her forehead, wiping away a small drop of blood. She observed the red mark on her fingers. 

“No Saotome, I owe you.”

\---

Ranma-chan arrived late for dinner, carrying the weight of a myriad of scrapes, tears, and bruises acquired since the incident in the market just a few hours prior. The redhead began to quickly and mechanically work through the food in front of her, effortlessly riposting impositions from her bear of a father. Finishing with a polite thanks to Kasumi, she wordlessly removed herself in the direction of the bathroom.

Nabiki observed a dark glare from her youngest sister in the other girl’s direction. Deciding not to give into the urge to poke and prod an obvious target, she made a roundabout path through the house to intercept the boy turned girl.

She caught up with the smaller girl, her hand on the sliding door to the changing room. Ranma paused at the sight of her. In unison they both started.

“About this afternoon-”

 

“About last night-”

Nabiki eyed the bandage wrapped around the redhead’s palm holding the door. Unconsciously she rubbed the decidedly unmarred spot on her own forehead. 

“I shouldn’t have let it get so close-” Ranma began, only to be cut off by her name resonating down the hall.

Akane stood glaring daggers at the other girl, her angry focus all but deleting Nabiki’s presence from her conscious mind.

The sigh that left Ranma’s lips carried the weight of the world on it.

“Akane?”

The blue haired martial artist lurched forward, pegging an outstretched finger painfully into Ranma’s chest.

“How was your day huh? Anything interesting happen?”

Ranma looked incedulously at the other girl, then down at herself and back again.

“Whadda ya think Kane?”

The flippant dismissal only served to drive the youngest daughter’s anger. Her fists clenched at her sides as she huffed.

“Yuka and Sayuri let me know that they found you out flirting with Ukyo again!”

Ranma’s eyes bulged. “This again? Look at me Akane, I ain’t got the time.”

She moved to retreat into the awaiting furo only to have the sliding door slam back shut in her face. Akane learned heavily on the other end of the door, her aura now faintly visible.

“Not with me apparently. Every single time I turn around you let some girl hang all over you!” She was in Ranma’s face again. 

Ranma shot back, leaning into the conflict. “How many times I gotta tell ya Akane! She’s one of my best friends!”

“Yeah, well, what does that make me?!”

The redhead paused, her eyes reaching back into herself.

“I don’t know.”

Akane’s eyes screwed shut as a hammer materialized in her hands. Nabiki watched Ranma brace herself for the inevitable.

“Ranma, you jerk!”

Soon Nabiki was plucking the bits of drywall landing in her bangs lazily descending from the Ranma shaped hole in the ceiling. Her sister was already briskly running down the hall. Soon, the sound of a sliding door slamming rocked the foundations of the house.

The middle Tendo decided to take advantage of the unoccupied furo.

\---

Nabiki sat at her desk, listening to the lazy sound of crickets taking over the early night air. Her hands and eyes were occupied with a small pile of official looking documents. A small notebook rested under one palm, a series of neatly written notes occupying it’s surface.

She was jolted from her focus by a faint rapping on her window. She could just barely make out the dark silhouette of a familiar form perched in the tree bordering her room. Casually, she moved to the other side of the room and slid the window to the side, revealing a worse for the wear pigtailed martial artist.

“Saotome.”

“Tendo.”

The shadows of the leaves broke his form into a patchwork. His body lit momentarily by passing fireflies. A dull roar like an oncoming train could be heard racing through the night air. Ranma’s mouth opened to speak, but his head quickly darted to the left.

“Oh for fucks s-”

Like a wrecking ball, a massive winged form plowed into the side of the boy, taking him and the top half of the tree with it. Nabiki watched stray leaves flutter in through her open window and land at her feet.

\---

Once again, a hypnotized girl swam through the deep blue twilight in the depths of the night. A pervasive haze of thick humidity found the brunette in a small pair of night shorts and a groggily thrown on tank top. Her destination, the bathroom, a visit performed with such nightly regularity to seldom even register in her memory the next morning.

She was drawn like a moth to a sliver of light cutting across the hall to strike the door of her given destination.

The sound of a wooden door sliding on it’s rails cut through the stillness of the household. The hallway behind her lit up in a ploom of white light streaming from the open entryway. Her eyes scrunched shut in response, used to navigation at the hour by way of feel, memory, and a collection of dim cutesy decorative nightlights that could be counted amongst a short list of Kasumi’s hobbies.

Her eyes and mind began adjusting to the scene in the Tendou changing room. A dark haired boy lay half naked on the cool tile floor, seeming to have given up on the simple act of disrobing after mostly removing the torn and tattered Chinese shirt hanging unceremoniously from one arm. His body was a mess of dirt, blood, bruises and burns. She observed his chest rise and fall rhythmically.

Ranma’s head turned slowly to meet her with glazed over eyes. He looked for a moment as if he was about to say something, then seemed to think better of it. Slowly he rose and exited into the bath proper, each movement strained and forced. In moments the door between the spaces opened slightly enough to let through a tattered pair of black pants before slipping closed again. 

Nabiki shivered as the coolness of the tile under her feet seemed to shoot up her entire body. The small room felt cavernous once she shut herself in, careful to flip over the ‘occupied’ sign behind her. The sound of running water could be heard echoing through the separation in the rooms.

She allowed herself into the room to the sight of a very naked boy scrubbing himself with what must have been hot water. The air in the room felt so still it was as if she could feel the waves in it hitting her from his subtle machinations. She observed his eyes sliding to the side to assess her, his shoulders tense slightly, but he gave no word or no pause to his actions.

The older girl slid in behind him. She felt the electric charge of his skin as she leaned over his back to snatch a soapy towel. She watched a deep dark shade of red fill his ears.

“Nabiki, what’re you-”

Without warning, as if by poltergeist or vengeful god, the shower head in front of him kicked on with a burst of icy cold water, washing over both of them. Ranma lurched forward cursing to manipulate the possessed fixture, leaving behind a wet disgruntled redhead once it had allowed itself to be turned off.

Ignoring the nightclothes now clinging to her, Nabiki set about running the soapy cloth over the small girl’s back.

“One of those days isn’t it?”

The redhead hunched forward, placing her chin into the palms of her hands.

“If you mean ordinary, then yeah.”

Nabiki let her hands work over the well toned surface in front of her as she considered the statement. There was obvious tension under her hands, an encyclopedia of anxieties taking form beneath battleworn skin. 

“This is gonna look bad ya know.” Ranma resigned, the words coming like a deep sigh.

“To who exactly?”

“Whoever it is that walks through that door.”

The middle daughter began working her thumb into the taught muscles, careful to avoid any of the glowing bruises. The smaller girl pushed back slightly into it, a shallow gasp escaping her lips.

“We’ll just have to cross that bridge if we come to it.”

The Saotome heir chuckled lightly in response, returning to soaping her legs.

The figures in the room moved slowly awash in the blue white light, the soft sounds of cloth on skin joined shallow steady breaths in a faint echo throughout the space. Occasionally something akin to a purr would escape involuntarily from the redheaded girl, eliciting faint smiles from the woman working over her back.

Cautiously, Nabiki broke the gentle silence between them.

“Today at the market,”

“I owe ya, like I said. Shoulda never got that close.”

“Saotome, you don’t owe me a damn thing. I was gonna stare that knife down until it was sticking out of my skull.”

“There wouldn’t a been no knife if it weren’t for me.” She hushed sharply.

Nabiki yanked the smaller girl around to face her. Ranma’s eyes initially attempted to avert her gaze, shifting down. An unexpected display of the brunette’s chest through her wet nightshirt sent them flying up wide to meet hers. 

“You saved me. You don’t owe me shit.” Her words were forceful carrying weight and certainty.

Ranma wrenched back around, more to save Nabiki’s modesty than her own. Standing up, she ran a quick torrent of cold water over her soapy form, blasting her skin clean.

“You should prolly go. This ain’t the place to talk about to talk bout these kinda things.”

“Ranma, this might be the only place to talk about these kind of things.”

The redhead’s shoulders hunched as Nabiki moved up to embrace her from behind. It was odd how comfortable she felt with the boy in this form, almost as if interacting with a surrogate sister. Where the night prior the closeness of their forms had created a bodily electric charge in her from her base to the tip of her head, their contact now elicited a radiating warm glow from deep in her chest.

“I meant what I said last night. I owe you something.”

Ranma’s body tensed at what she took to as an implied meaning.

“Nobody gotta owe me nothing.” She muttered, convincing not even herself.

Nabiki’s hand slid down to wrap around the injured hand that had saved her life. The small girl’s fingers entwined in her own and Nabiki felt a shift as her bare back relaxed and pressed back into the embrace.

“I can get you out,” she felt the girl’s free hand alight on her own hand resting casually on the redheads collar bone, “if you want.”

“You’re serious?”

Nabiki bit her lip, afraid to give false hope.

“All but one of them, and I think you’d have to get away for a while.”

“It’s not enough. Not if one of em is still hanging.”

“Give me time and I think we could figure it out.”

The naked girl whirled around in her arms, wrapping slender arms around her. From her chest the small girl spoke.

 

“Why are you doin this for me?”

Nabiki looked down at two piercing blue orbs shining up at her. They were a mixture of hope, fear, and something more. Something that seemed to be trying to reach deep inside of her.

“We all deserve a second chance. Helping you just might be part of getting mine.”

“I could kiss you.” The redhead beamed.

Nabiki found herself taken aback, unsure how to read the uncharacteristic statement. Suddenly she was intimately unaware of how she felt about the situation she found herself in. 

Ranma took her pause as a cue to lean her face upward. Nabiki met the other girl at the forehead, feeling the hot breath escaping the girl’s lips to mingle with her own.

“Maybe you should change back.”

“Why?” Ranma’s words came out huskily as she craned up to make contact with the brunette in her arms. 

Nabiki pulled away reflexively, her head buzzing. The confused look on her face was enough to stop all forward momentum from the other girl. 

Ranma stepped back a moment, considering the furo. Her own face mirrored the confusion Nabiki felt. Unconsciously Ranma moved to cover herself.

“It’s late, I prolly shouldn’t be soaking if I don’t wanna fall asleep in the tub.”

“Ranma?”

“We can talk tomorrow. I’d ‘preciate it.”

With uncanny grace and speed Ranma removed herself from the room, followed by a series of catlike footfalls barely audible through the heavy walls. Nabiki stood confused, eyes fixed on the hot water tap dripping slowly onto cold tile floor.


	3. Chapter 3

The room was lit with a patchwork quilt of the darkest blues, forms shifting and bleeding into one another, waiting for the coming light of dawn to shape them into being. The air filled the space in a thick sweaty haze, an extension of the lone human in the space, drifting through the night within its confines. A cool breeze from an open window occasioned to flit through the room, the sweet smells of summer fauna mingling with the collection of scents that marked the territory of the girl inside. 

She lay in a tangled heap on top of her covers, her pajama bottoms kicked down and shackled to her ankles, a tank top skewed idiotically over her chest like a seatbelt. Her skin was flush against the heavy air in the room, collecting drops and rivulets of sweat that would soon find their way into the air, serving to further increase the weight of the warm blanket of humidity. Locks of blue hair dressed her pillow in a damp splay, her mouth sucking lightly at a thick strand of it pasted to the side of her head in a river across her cheek. Between her legs a small throw pillow had been repurposed. In the dim twilight of the early morning, the hips of her black silhouette could just be made out to rock lightly and rhythmically into it.

From outside, a car alarm sounded briefly, an elderly neighbor endlessly and maddeningly mistaking the buttons on their key-fob. 

Akane half woke. Across from her the red numbers of her alarm clock blurred into a struggling focus. 

Twenty minutes still. 

Not near enough time to fall back into real sleep before the alarm would demand her attention. 

Unconsciously, her lips were still playing over the lock of hair in her mouth. Slowly, she became aware of the momentum she had carried over from sleep. The state her body had worked itself into while her mind occupied some now forgotten dreamspace.

Akane rolled onto her back, hurling the pillow between her legs out into the void, spitting the lock of hair from her mouth to join its kin in tendrils across her pillow. In her mind’s half in and half out state her hand started to wander on instinct as she muddled through a well worn debate. 

It wouldn’t do to put in the effort. It never worked anyway. 

But still, maybe. 

This time. 

If she could just recapture that dreamy fantasy.

She was already so close, it should be easy to finally-

From behind closed eyes Akane attempted to channel the hypnopompic state of the early morning, surrendering her body and hands to act of their own accord. She couldn’t be sure what it had been as she lay sleeping to bring her here, she never remembered dreams like that, but she had a hunch.

It was Ranma. It had to be, as much as she loathe to admit it. He was the only boy she’d ever met to spark these kinds of feelings within her. 

In her mind’s eye she formed a picture of the pigtailed boy, starting from his eyes and blooming outward. It was a fight between her conscious and unconscious control over the imagery. The more reality she was able to pour into the construct, the more energy her subconscious seemed to gain to grab her hand and run off in it’s own direction.

Cool summer breeze met puffs of hot drowsy exhalation from a tangled silhouette.

A vision of her fiance moved toward her ethereal form, casually disrobing his silk shirt and flinging it somewhere into the void. The sculpted fitness of his torso struggled to maintain form, her eyes drawn to the deep cerulean blue pools of his eyes. He slipped toward her, and as he did, she felt the electric tingle as if something had slipped the clothes from her shoulders.

Exposed to him in the dreamscape, and he to her. 

A shiver ran down her back as if another pair of hands were running the length of her. The unreality of the dream broke through to the body of the girl in the dim room.

From behind her slipped the purple haired Amazon, clad in naught but she was born with. The source of electric thrill. 

The future matriarch moved to obscure the image of the boy. Her body was a toned lean thing, carrying patches of smooth fat in the only places that really mattered. Her eyes ran over the other girl’s form as she tried to wrest control and reconjure the man held hostage behind it. Somewhere, in another world she still tentatively had one foot in, she could feel something familiar welling up inside of her.

Akane’s conscious mind grabbed hold, partially dissolving the acuity of the fantasy. Through force of will the lavender object of her ire was hurled into the inky black, leaving behind the boy she had come here for. 

She imagined his approach. How he’d take hold of her. How he’d gently slip a hand across her brow to shift aside a lock of hair. How he’d lean in to her and how she’d lose herself as those piercing blue forms grew larger and larger in her vision.

Rapidly, the dreamy state started to once again overtake her reality. 

Back in her bed, her pace quickened as her hands lost themselves grappling with her body.

She leaned into her unreal fiance, leaving a trail of soft kisses down the side of his neck. Her breathing quickened as she felt his hands run down her back. Felt a leg pressed up firmly in between her own. Felt the soft mass of breasts pressing up against her as long hair spilled down to tickle at flesh now breaking out into goosebumps.

Akane rocked back to find herself embraced by Ukyo’s athletic form. Ranma stood just behind, once again fully clothed.

From her bed, the blue haired girl growled. 

So close. So infinitely far away all the same. 

She fought back for control. Lazily, it bubbled through her mind that it always ended up like this. 

This was why she stopped trying. 

Still maybe, just once.

Roughly she shoved the chef aside, sending the brunette tumbling of into the dark depths of her subconscious. Approaching the boy, she raggedly tore his shirt from him, pressing herself hard into him as her dream hands found purchase in tandem with their partners back on Earth.

Suddenly the two were awash. 

Akane briefly noted the change in mass of the girl now in her embrace. It wasn’t ideal, but she had been working herself into a steady rhythm, an escalating thing that felt sure to climb all the way to a dramatic peak. Her physical momentum carried her forward as mentally she continued to express herself to the boy in the wrong body.

Some smaller part of her conscious self was now in a fitful war for control of the fantasy, even as her body moved onward undeterred. One moment she was able to wrestle the black haired youth back into being, only to slip off into another wet splash as she let go into the dream. 

Despite this battle, the build inside of her was now reaching an urgent point. 

A frantic, desperate, animal thing. 

The heavy acceleration of a runaway train.

She needed this. 

She craved it. 

It had been so long. 

They were tangled on the floor as she was tangled in her sheets, she and Ranma-chan. She wanted the boy, but more than anything she wanted release.

For a fleeting moment he was back. 

Seizing the opportunity, she became a jerking, gyrating thrash of movement as she attempted to capitalize on the moment she’d been fighting for. It was there like some growing point in the distance. She could feel it swelling, cascading up and out and through her whole body. The electric tingles and pricks as every nerve ending prepared to release at once. 

She was wrapped up in him. They were union. 

She was there. Finally. The journey was over. 

She felt it start to take her as she panted down at the flushed redhead beneath her.

Akane’s eyes shot open just as she felt a climax begin to rocket through her body. 

Only to stop dead. 

The feeling rushed back as if draining from her, leaving her cold, numb. 

Hollow. 

Her breathing slipped into a growl of frustration as her eyes screwed shut. And as if on cue, the harsh sounds of her alarm clock echoed through the room. Her teeth gritted as her free hand slapped hard down on the mattress below her.

It was as her hand came cracking down on the bleating alarm that the door to her room slid open.

Nabiki stared blankly down at the state of her younger sister. The seconds hung as their eyes met.

“Oh, how fun.”

Akane hurled a pillow at her sister’s retreating back. 

She launched disheveled to slam the door closed. Her fists clenched and she pivoted to let loose a haymaker into a hanging speed bag. It’s prompt explosion sent whirls of gray powder lilting about the room.

\---

Ukyo woke in a familiar fog. Her mouth held a sickly sweet taste on the back of her tongue as her sinus cavities seemed to swell behind her eyes and temples. To her chest she still clutched a pillow in a sleepy embrace, one of two bordering her form, the other tucked lightly against her back. Her body was secured from the chill of the central air by a thick comforter in lieu of any constrictive sleepwear. 

It was fifteen minutes before her alarm would sound. She knew that, it always was. Ukyo didn’t imagine she could identify the noise of the thing in a line up as infrequently as she ever heard it. 

With the ease of routine, she disabled the device, content to forgo it’s shrill roar yet another morning. 

She slid into a sitting position on the bed, hovering slightly over her knees. Her brown hair stood up from her head in arcing cowlicks, cascaded down her shoulders in tangled clumps. Cautiously she rubbed her head, shaking it just slightly as if to test the waters before taking to her feet. Absently her upper teeth ran over her tongue. Small pops left her mouth as her tongue smacked her upper palette, grimacing as the taste of her morning communicated the night prior.

The restaurant was a silent thing around her, waiting on it’s sole occupant to kickstart the animus of it. For the next several hours hers would be the only noise to disturb the silent spell lingering over the place.

Hands found purchase in a light switch as she fumbled about the room. The introduction of harsh white light from overhead caused the girl to squint and shake her head reflexively, the wash of it against her retinas forever a wake up slap to the face. Beleaguered, she made her way through the impetus to her days.

Ukyo’s bedroom was in sharp contrast to the spartan lifestyle of many of her contemporaries. In many ways it could be said to compensate in a balance of scales, it’s many shelves and surfaces each holding an eclectic collection of photos and knicknacks. The girl was a sentimental stockpiler of memories. Here and there were pictures of her and her father at different ages, little notes and pictures gifted to her from friends as far back as her elementary school days, trophies, souvenirs, and even a whole section of wall dedicated to the group of maniacs she had found here in Nerima. 

This shrine to the moments and people in her life was hers and hers alone, never one to have company beyond the borders of her kitchen. That the girl could be one of Nabiki’s more regular customers would be a surprise to most of her friends and general student body. The mercenary’s market trended blue, but that didn’t mean a collection of more innocent material hadn’t also accumulated under the girl’s omnipresent camera lens. 

Over her time in Nerima she’d requisitioned countless shots of the lot of them. Many of the outings she’d participated in, but some still came from those that she’d had to miss out on. The photos presented a much different view of the Nerima Wrecking Crew. To an impartial observer they were of a group of rather eccentric looking friends, none of the pictures communicating the webwork of grudges, rivalries and obligations that plagued each of them. None of this had ever crossed Ukyo’s mind, the chef having always been content to select the prints on gut instinct. If they made her feel happy or warm inside, she sought out their purchase.

The drain swirled with a flush of toothpaste. Ukyo’s slightly bloodshot eyes impassively watched it go as her hands began working through her long hair with a stiff brush. Her mind went to the day ahead of her.

It was almost too bad, that today shouldn’t be a school day. 

She smirked absently at the thought, aware as she was of the loathing many of her peers had toward the obligation. But, as someone whose time after school was dictated heavily by the business she ran, there was something to be said about the grounds to socialize that her time at school gave her. 

Should give her, at least.

Admittedly, her attendance had been slipping the past few months. Her peers had been supportive at first, knowing that the young entrepreneur’s obligations balanced on a razor’s edge. Eventually though, the increasing series of tardies and missed days had begun to displace her from her classmates. 

As if she was some sort of delinquent. 

The only one who hadn’t shifted away from her was the one with an attendance record almost as bad as her own. Ranma was in many ways what got her out of bed and into class in the morning. To have those brief moments between classes that she might fritter away with a friend. The occasional lunch without interruption by other claims to his attention. To just have that quiet moment together to talk and vent and joke with one another.

Even that had become increasingly rare. The two of them were always under a microscope in a way, peers content to stay distant but scrutinizing behind layers of glass. And if not the student body, then Akane.

Still, today. Today she thought she had it in her take a chance on those small moments, given the chance.

She knew there was always a possibility he might show up at the restaurant. And if not him, then there were other peers that popped in here and there. Her regular customers could be good for small talk too. She’d be locked to the grill, but certainly someone could wander in and help her kill the time.

Making her way into the static harmony of the kitchen, she paused to remove an empty stained wine glass from the countertop and into the sink. A finished bottle of red clinked hard into a half filled recycling bin.

Ukyo began laying out the odds and ends for her own breakfast on the spotless countertops. With a sigh at the glass in the sink, she removed a small pill bottle from a drawer at her waist and tipped two brown capsules into her mouth.

Today was going to be fine. 

Great even. 

She was sure of it.

\---

Across a landscape of hard packed dirt and towering blades of emerald grass one intrepid ant explorer roamed. It’s loping path sent it in and out of steadily forming pools of dawn light growing and merging themselves into an ocean of goldenrod. It traced its way along the sides of a mountain that glowed warm and shifted slightly in a ready pattern. 

The traveler was quick to scale the uncertain mass, heroically claiming new domains for it’s queen. 

From olympian heights it found the passageways to the source of the heat within. Hot air rushed out of the cavern at the antenna’d adventurer. It would find the source of this energy. It would return triumphant to his queen this day.

Ryoga Hibiki shot up from his sleeping pad as his breath hitched in his throat. Doubling over gagging, he pounded his chest wheezing, before coughing loose one very big, very angry ant. He flicked it off into the sunrise as he spit repeatedly off to the side.

The disheveled boy rose, taking stock of the makeshift campsite. His meager possessions were scattered haphazardly about a hastily dug fire pit. An open pack, a trench shovel standing upright in the dirt, a sleeping pad he’d managed to all but sweat through in the night. 

It had been unusually warm for Saskatchewan last night he noted.

Laying on an upright log by dead charcoal of last nights fire was an open notebook, it’s pages filled with a shaky uneven handwriting. It had been stupid of him to leave it out like that in the event of rain, but he knew it’s whole contents by heart anyway. Inside were his hopes, his dreams, his fears, his wants and worries. The life of a boy who spent the majority of his time having to narrate, vent and opine to himself.

It was uncommon for the lost boy to find companionship with a common language out on the road. Communication had a tendency to trend toward quick one and two word sentences accompanied by hand signals and intonations. Sometimes he’d find himself venting to an individual nice enough to sit and listen politely to a litany of words they could never parse. 

Mostly he spoke to the road. 

He spoke to the night sky. 

He spoke to the fire and flames, to the cicadas, the trees.

To himself. He spoke with himself.

Sometimes luck would have it that he might share a temporary kinship with a likely or not companion out in some strange land. He wrote the most about those. 

Amber-Lynn from Tennessee, whose family took him in without question after he’d fallen in an emaciated heap through their fence and right into the middle of a neighborhood barbeque. 

Sharif from Dubai, who’d spotten Ryoga wandering about while he and his friends burned cash on a late night booze cruise. The man had insisted on showing the boy a good time, and as his uncertain luck would have it, it was. 

The next day had hurt something fierce though. 

Boris and his pals Boris, Boris, and Leo who’d pulled him frozen and partially buried from a snow drift. 

He’d had the time of his life with them and many others, but their encounters always ended the same.

With him leaving. And never finding them again. Memories of their encounters just about the only thing he could ever keep with him.

Suddenly a kickball rebounded off of Ryoga’s skull with a thick thud. The boy was so lost in thought he didn’t even register the impact, never breaking stride in his dismantling of the campsite. 

That was what made Akane special, he thought. Not only was she one of the few people his muddled brain ever managed to find him back to, she also happened to be one of those precious few individuals that he could sit with and share the life he lived. 

He remembered how good Akari was for that.

From his left a small child bent to pick up the estranged kickball, hastily mumbling an apology at the distracted bandana clad youth. His friends stood at the treeline of the public field ushering him to hurry up.

Ryoga guessed he was probably in the Catskill Mountains by the look of things around here. He figured it might be possible to walk to Paris by early evening, assuming the Himalayas didn’t give him any trouble. From there, Nerima was always right around the corner.

\---

From a room that any visitor to the Nekohanten would identify as a closet, the robed figure of a boy with coke bottle glasses removed himself. The floorboards beneath him occasioned creaks and groans no matter how deftly he learned to move on his feet. He’d long suspected the ghoul had somehow engineered it that way, she herself never eliciting a sound as she pogo’d through the building.

The musty humid smell of the upper floors gave way to the warm clean smell of the kitchen. By the time he saw either of the others the air would be awash in the aroma of a restaurants worth of prep work. Mis en place set, stock pots rolling, the smell of freshly crushed garlic. It was his job. It was his place, although that never stopped him from vocalizing his distaste. 

The matriarch was strict. Quick to put you in line, but she was not nearly as scary as the stories back home made the kids believe. Over the years the tone he’d taken with the leader had relaxed more and more. Enough so that his contemporaries would surely assumed he’d be hanged for it. But it turned out she was much more even handed, even though she might treat him like second hand garbage on the surface.

It made him miss his own great grandmother. Not quite as high in status as Cologne, but of the same cloth. Pomade could be a mean hard nosed old bitch, but deep down the family all knew she had a heart of gold.

As if summoned, he noted the elder appear in the dining hall, somehow pogoing without spilling a drop of the large cup of tea she sipped offhandedly. 

“Morning.” He issued as she passed him through the kitchen on way to the refrigerator.

She offered him a glance and nothing more. With cream added to her tea, she slipped out without further acknowledgement.

Mousse sent up a cloudburst of flour from the wooden countertop as he slapped down a long roll of dough, doubling it back over itself to stretch and slap down again. 

He’d learned how to make noodles from his uncle Jerry-Curl. The man had a way of making the kitchen fun for him in a way his own mother never quite could. Absently, he wondered what the old man could teach him now. What he might now be able to teach him in return.

From his peripheral he watched Shampo walk bodily through the swinging door to the kitchen, making her way in a beeline toward the coffee pot by the fridge. His stomach welled up at the sight of her. It never stopped, that feeling. It was why he had put up with the endless embarrassments and indignities over the years. 

From the bottom of his heart he issued a “Good morning Shampoo!” He was met only by a scowl from the girl. Her hand jerked slightly in it’s act of pouring water into the drip machine.

“No today, duck duck Mousse.”

The feeling in his stomach drained back down at the tone from the girl. Lately the two of them had only been able to react to him with a mix of apathy and exhaustion. He almost missed the anger, at least there had been an intensity to it.

They spent an endless agonizing moment with one another. 

He, awkwardly carrying out the task of preparing noodles, trying to avoid the impulse to babble at the girl in the room. 

She, rocked back against the countertop, staring hypnotized by the slow steady drip of coffee into it’s glass container.

When she left it dawned on Mousse to write up Uncle Jerry-Curl. He hadn’t had much luck with the post recently with any of his family, but maybe his luck would change.

\---

The dojo was filled with the heavy sound of a frustrated female martial artist working off energy with an accelerated morning routine. Normally she’d only do a couple hundred sit ups, but today she was gunning for an even thousand.

From over her knees she could make out the yard and house beyond through the wide entryway of the dojo. On the porch she noted her middle sister locked in to an extended conversation with the red haired Ranma. The pervert hadn’t even changed back this morning, merely throwing on dry clothes after walking half naked through the house. Akane couldn’t describe the kind of anger that passed through her any time the house guest brushed past her through the hall like that. The indecency of it. 

She suppressed a shudder and quickened her pace.

Ranma and her sister had been spending an usual amount of time in each others company actually. Now that she thought about it. Normally the two repelled each other like magnets of the same sign, as if it was inherent to their structures to maintain a certain distance between one another. 

At least this past week though, hadn’t she seen the two of them together more than usual? Come to think of it, didn’t it sound like Aunty Nodoka’s name she kept hearing from the two in passing?

That was it! 

The house. 

Ranma must have been trading some small part of his soul to her sister to help his mother repair the damages from the wedding. She was so proud of herself for making the connection her mind almost let her pass the disastrous non-union that had taken place. Either a half a year or a lifetime ago now.

She tried not to think about it. Not because the failure to launch had hurt her, that she felt as if she’d missed the chance of a lifetime. No, it was her reaction there on the aisle right before the chaos took over. The sense of relief that had washed through her even as her body began ducking flying shrapnel. 

Why had it been relief?

Immediately before walking down that aisle, she had been so sure she was making the right decision. Sure, they were both getting swept up in the moment, but she had been inexplicably comfortable with it. That was, right up until she was facing him. Him in his best suit, looking for all intents and purposes like a Queen’s bounty. But looking at him then, she’d been so suddenly and viscerally conflicted, torn apart on the inside by some unknown source.

Then there was just a zen like calm as the world exploded around her.

All the way through the disaster ending the last of the nannichuan, it had carried through her. Somehow so nonplussed by the end of all ends to her future husband’s dilemma. 

Maybe that was it, she thought. The curse was what held her back, the thought of it always trying to leap up from her unconscious mind. 

If he just didn’t have that stupid curse she wouldn’t feel so confused. 

Akane rounded out the last of her sit ups, rising to a standing position to move onto the next exercise. She noted the curse in mind come jogging over. To this day she still ran around loose under her shirts, unwilling to invest in even a simple sports bra. It irked her so much watching the smaller girl prance around like that. As if she had no shame.

“Yo, Akane.” 

“Ranma.”

The girl rocked back on her heels casting her eyes up at the sky.

“Listen. You gonna be round tonight?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re the one that’s always out doing who knows what with some other girl.”

Earnestly, the boy-turned-girl cocked her head at Akane. “There’s a couple a guys that hold me up too ya know.”

Akane reeled inwardly at the implications behind the statement as the redhead looked on innocently. He couldn’t be? No. But maybe because he was sometimes a she did that-

Akane shook the image from her head. It was just- It was wrong.

Ranma was as oblivious as ever to whatever was going on in Akane’s head.

“But anyways, my moms is gonna be down later. We were gonna get everyone together and, uh well, talk bout stuff.” Sheepishly she followed, unaware that Akane’s mind had gone elsewhere. “An well, you oughta be there, and if ya can’t we can try ‘nother time.”

Akane nodded detached at the other girl, still trying to parse the implicit message she’d received from Ranma into sense. 

Was Ranma...that way? Was that why she’d felt so hollow at the altar? 

But if he would always be they- 

Akane launched into a series of one hundred pull ups as Ranma returned to her seat by Nabiki. Her mind slipped further and further from the task at hand.

\---

Shampoo fumed inwardly as her feet drove the bike forward with reckless aggression. Even before she began speaking, her last delivery had pegged her on appearance as someone they could talk down to. When they heard the girls pidgin Japanese, it only went further downhill. The proud warrior had stood there with a smile on her face as a man she could easily put six feet under berated her like a small idiot child. Not because of a problem with the order, or a late delivery, not even for who she was inside, but because of what he saw of her on the surface.

The Japanese were unusually polite people by and large. They wore their masks well, but over the years Shampoo had been given ample reason to be suspicious of whatever inner monologue they weren’t voicing. Because every now and again she met one like her last delivery. Someone almost refreshingly content to wear their prejudice on their sleeve. Someone more than happy to reinforce her insecurities about being a stranger in a strange land.

Great grandmother had been increasingly less forgiving about Shampoo’s behavior. Not more than a few months prior she’d have been congratulated for sticking up for their people’s honor, had she put the frail bigot in the ground. Now though, such actions would be attacked as allowing her personal pride to further shame her. She should think about what her behavior said about the restaurant, what the ramifications would be on her as Cologne hammered home that her days of being protected from herself were over.

Shampoo had grown so accustomed to letting her anger solve her problems that suppressing the urge was a pain almost physical to her being. Having to hold in that hurt, to pretend it didn’t exist. It hurt to know that she could be hurt like that. That she couldn’t lash out and make it all go away. That she had to come upon another way of processing the frustration and pain inside of her.

Looking on at this little beady eyed relic of an age that still wouldn’t pass, as he tore her down for who he thought she was, telling herself that she knew who she was inside, that she wasn’t as small as his worldview would place her. Smiling at him as she waited patiently for him to pay. Him slowly feeding each yen into her palm, counting it out to her with an exaggerated over pronunciation. Feeling like an animal being made to dance for peanuts, her pride preventing her from lashing or crying out.

That someone so objectively weak could make her want to cry, it was torturous. 

It was over. Over, but never over. 

An experience she’d hold in her heart like a stain that would never wash out. 

The proud Amazon’s eyes screwed shut as she held back tears, the recent inhumanity dredging up a laundry list of painful memories of her time in Japan. Her face contorted into an angry mask as she let out a feral scream to the road in front of her. She would not allow this to hurt her. 

It did not hurt her. 

She could not be hurt like this.

Beneath her the bike moved like a wild horse, channeling the energy of it’s rider. It ran through lights, skipped and skidded between cars, seared black marks into walls. It was just as it’s rider began to lose herself in the energy of the machine underneath her that injustices and humiliations sought to compound themselves. 

The leg of her silk pants had been knocked loose by her viscous cycling of the pedals, falling from its place around her calf down to her ankle. Before the girl could even notice, the loose fabric had worked its way into the spinning chain of the bike, tearing and tangling the expensive pink silk and grinding the wheel to a sudden halt.

Shampoo was so distracted trying to block out her mental processes she didn’t register the disaster until she was already in the thick of it. As the bike started to skid, Shampoo tried to compensate despite her ankle firmly trapped to it’s side. It was the weight of the delivery box on the back that would ultimately spelled her downfall. She knew the crash was imminent, but chose to attempt to save the box ahead of herself. The skid transformed into a flip as the front wheel caught the ground at an odd angle, dragging Shampoo along with it by the ankle. In the midst of the tumble, the lavender haired girl used the momentum to whip the delivery away, low and parallel with the ground. It skidded along the road surface until friction safely halted it as the bike rolled the girl into the bumper of a parked car like a crocodile in a death spin.

She groaned as she leaned back into the vehicle behind her, kicking herself free from the twisted chain with a rip down the full leg of her pants. She was slightly shaken up, but she’d certainly had worse. It was the loss of control that spooked her the most, that she could get so sloppy. 

Still, she was fine. The bike was fine, the food was fine. Everything was fine.

Her clothes weren’t fine. The cute silk uniform was covered in a laundry list of scuffs, black marks, and tears. She could feel her hair had come undone on one side. With the back of her wrist she rubbed a smudge of blood from her cheekbone. 

Shampoo tried not to think about how her great grandmother would react to the condition she would be coming back in. Tried not to think about how different it would have been only a few months prior. How she herself was ultimately at fault for new paradigms.

At that, the universe decided to add insult to the injuries and injustices of the warrior. 

A small molotov of a girl leaned over her, the delivery box perched delicately in her cocked arm.

“Jeez Shampoo, I seen you look better.” The girl started, attempting to place the box of ramen beside the downed amazon. It was quickly anticipated and snatched from her grip, Shampoo shielding it away from her.

“NO FOR RANMA.”

Crimson locks played over the girl’s eyes as she put on the expression that had won her countless free meals.

“Not even just one?”

“NO.”

Ranma looked taken aback by the tone of the other girl, seeming all of a sudden too curious as to where the exuberant youth he knew had gone to. Shampoo felt herself being assessed as she flipped the bike and disengaged the back wheel with a practiced finesse. With a quick reattachment of the chain she was soon resecuring her package to the rear of the bicycle. The whole time her eyes stayed focused on her task, even as Ranma’s eyes stayed focused on her.

Ranma was always the easiest to draw in when he was ignored, the hardest to catch when chased. Infuriating. She could almost feel the gears clicking in the other girl’s head as the unexpected lack of attention was processed like an obstacle. If she played things wrong Ranma may just chase her all over town.

Not that she would mind that. For once. 

But if it held her up. Especially if Cologne found out why.

“Don’t get mad. Like I think you’re weak or nothin’. But’re ya hurt Xian-Pu?”

Her pronunciation wasn’t perfect, but the years spent in Shampoo’s home country resonated through the other girl’s words. There was a perverse sincerity behind hearing Ranma use her name like that. She knew she should be pushing the redhead away, and now it was taking everything in her power not to embrace her. 

She stared resolutely down at the bike, mind on the duty she had to perform.

No, it wasn’t fair. She couldn’t say that. What she was supposed to say. Not now. 

So she said the thing she always said. That same stupid thing. One of the first bits of Japanese she’d made sure to learn, back when she’d assumed it could all be so easy.

“You take Shampoo on date. Yes?”

She side-eyed the redhead as she mounted the bike to leave. Already anticipating the response. Attention focused on avoiding having to deal with more in consequence back at the restaurant. 

Her foot froze in a downward stroke on the pedal as her she struggled to parse the words.

“What you say?”

Ranma was sheepish, all of a sudden having to speak with eye contact returned.

“Yeah. I guess. If you gotta call it that, or whatever. Maybe we should hang out. I got some things to talk bout with people, and I guess you’re one of em.”

The entirety of her resolve flew out of her as she shot from her bike like a dart into the side of the smaller girl. Ranma managed to retain their balance, backpedaling until she was forced against a wall. Shampoo spoke from a place directly in front of the other girl’s face.

“Tonight. After Nekohanten close.”

She could feel tenseness of the smaller girl as she pressed the two of them together. 

“I-I can meet you there.”

“No work. Meet at park by shop. There a lamppost over too too big frog statue.”

She leaned in, brushing her lips lightly with the smaller girls.

And before Ranma could say or do something to spoil the moment, she was off.

\---

Ukyo mopped the sweat from her brow with the back of her sleeve, watching as stray droplets struck the hot surface in front of her to sizzle and pop their way back out of existence. 

The restaurant held the quiet murmur of the handful of stragglers still holding barely audible conversations over top of picked over meals. Remnants of the rush. Evidence of the sea of life that washed in and out of the place like the tides.

The steady rhythm of life behind the grill was one the girl had rarely been without. She’d been born into it and shaped by it like a stone buried in the sands of the shore. Her life felt most honest, most rewarding, most clear, moving along with the passage of these steady days.

Soon the last of the lunchtime crowd would move on, perhaps to leave this eddy and rejoin their own current. Here and there she would pick up wayward souls like pieces of driftwood, never but so many and never but so long. A rare few may even fly in like messages in a bottle, lost treasures containing memories that Ukyo could lose herself in briefly while the water lapped gently at her toes. 

Always the storm would form on the horizon, it’s appearance running hand and hand with the cycles of the sun and the moon. She would be there to face the strong winds and crashing waves as she had the day before, as she would the day after. As she always would. Forever fighting back the sea.

The door clinked, announcing the accumulation of more aimless driftwood. From her peripheral a shaggy mop of black hair alerted the chef that she may have lucked into a lost treasure from some far off land. She felt her stomach light up at the gift received to pass the sleepy lull. She turned her eyes up to face the boy.

Ryoga Hibiki, looking as muddled and disheveled as ever, his eyes currently making the connection between the language of her menu and his own potential position in space. Maybe it wasn’t who she’d been hoping for, but the lost boy was still a welcome surprise. 

She stole his attention with a playful jab in his side. It was like punching a concrete barrier, but he felt it enough to turn to her with surprise in his eyes.

“Good to see ya sugar! But what are ya doin’ in Detroit?”

She suppressed a giggle as doom and confusion spilled down his face.

“Detroit? Ugggh, I’ve hardly gotten anywhere! Wait.” Her shit eating grin was no give away to the dense boy in front of her. “What are YOU doing in Detroit?”

Ukyo doubled over herself laughing as she led her idiot friend over to a seat by the grill.

“Hibiki, really. Let me personally welcome you back to Nerima.”

She watched his face light up as she began prepping the grill.

“Nerima!? I can’t believe I made it so quickly. Normally it takes way longer to walk here from New York.”

Ukyo had often wondered to what degree this boy had actually lost himself. Whether he spent his days merely wandering Tokyo in confused circles assigning domestic locations foreign names from a map. If she hadn’t seen some of the souvenirs he’d managed to carry along with him she’d fully doubt he ever made it even as far as Osaka. 

There was always room to take him with a grain of salt. Maybe a tablespoon.

“Any preferences?” She motioned down at the grill, already running a mental checklist on his ordering habits. Mushrooms, no pork, heavy on the sauce, burn it a bit. It suddenly occurred to her that his tastes may have developed largely by way of campfire cooking.

“Anything’s fine, thanks.” Ryoga grunted out the response, his unfocused eyes playing over the wall behind her. Ukyo failed to notice, her hands already quick at work, smiling inwardly to herself.

“So where ya been this time huh? Been a while since we seen you.”

“What? Oh, um. All over I guess. Kinda lost track.” Almost as an afterthought he added, “What’s going on with you?”

Ukyo beamed at him, either oblivious to the other. “Oh I’m glad you asked! Where do I even start? Well first, I’ve been super into these two new shows. I don’t know if you get a chance to watch much TV but this season has had some amazing stuff.”

“I can’t say I’m aware.”

Ukyo launched into an extended dialog at the boy about what he was missing on television, how business at the restaurant had been, a litany of anecdotes and stories she’d collected off of the nameless faceless masses. Ryoga maintained a polite but distant eye contact, nodding or offering short interjections and affirmations as necessary. He moved methodically through his food as the chef gesticulated merrily about her day to day.

Suddenly he cut through her dialog. “What about everyone? How they all been?”

Ukyo was caught off guard. How had everyone been? She’d seen Ranma a few times, Shampoo and Mousse once or twice at the market. It didn’t feel like as much time should have passed as it had, as little as she was dredging up.

“Oh, umm. Well. They’ve all been good. You know, same old same old.”

“Akane?”

Now that was one right there. Akane used to be the first and primary thing Ranchan had come to talk with her about. When had that stopped? She honestly couldn’t remember the last time the other girl had come up. 

At school, she’d certainly seen her. Almost always in passing though, from a safe distance.

“I think she’s doing okay.” She hoped, at least. Honestly she had no idea.

Ukyo regarded the lost boy, clearly mulling through something in his mind. If she let him get out that door who knew when she’d see him again? And it was so nice to have company. Maybe she could offer him a place to crash for a bit? Get some help around the restaurant from a friend? It’d be like a sleepover every night! She could introduce him to all the wonderful stories she watched after closing and he could regale her with all the wild adventures he’d been on. It would be great. 

“Ya know Sugar, you could certainly-”

He cut her off, unaware. “Could you take me over there? To the Tendo’s?”

Ukyo felt her heart sink a bit, but she kept a cheery disposition. “Yeah. Absolutely! I can walk you over after close. Stop in and say ‘hi’ myself for a bit even.” 

“That’d be great.” He turned his head toward an open table out of the way in the corner. “If you don’t mind, I can sit over there. Keep out of your hair and all that.”

“Long as you want.” Anywhere would be fine. Here at the grill even.

She watched him displace himself to the solitary table. Soon he’d removed a worn notebook from his pack and began to start scribbling in it.

\---

Black hair spilled down over the dark mahogany table beneath it. With a swipe of the hand the image of a boy deep in concentration rose up to reflect off of it’s surface. The soft scuff of the towel lilted through the space, joining a faint clink of dishware on dishware elsewhere in the distance.

Scanning the horizon of freshly bussed tables, one could hardly ascertain the mad house the place had been less than an hour prior. This lull would never last, not if they were lucky. No, the asylum would once again reach full capacity, and the hours once again race by as the small guard tried to keep a mass of people from shaking the walls apart. 

For now though, Mousse was free to move at his leisure, to let his mind wander to other things as his body worked through the established patterns of maintenance this part of the day required. 

For once, he wasn’t mentally zeroed in on the lavender bombshell that brought him to this strange land. No, since the morning, he’d been thinking more and more about the family he’d left behind to pursue the potential antecedent for his own future family. How he’d thought himself a renegade, a lone wolf setting off after an unattainable prey. How he didn’t need the warm shelter of the nest he’d grown up in anymore. That he could stand up to an Elder if he had to.

His family had always nurtured his passions, even when such things brought him at odds with the world around him. Even after leaving them behind, they’d still managed to keep in touch on a fairly regular basis, filling him in on the goings on of village life, devouring the stories of his life away in the big city. Living vicariously through his actions, and pushing him on in support, even if they didn’t always truly believe he could achieve his goals. They’d never said so directly, but he knew they didn’t think he could win over the Elder’s great granddaughter. 

But he knew they’d allow him to try. To succeed or fail on his own merits. 

He missed that kind of support. When he could declare he was going to the moon, and they’d smile and say that they knew he had it in him to do it.

Their exchanges since he left had always been shaky, byproduct not just of distance, but of the secluded nature of the Amazon village. He’d gotten used to losing letters, of knowing that there were words out there that would never be read. It had been quite some time though, this gap. Almost six months on and not a word back. Four now had left for the village, twice he’d sent repeats, but still no word back from anyone.

The moment the old ghoul bounced out of the kitchen he had decided. They could find some help around for a week or so without him. Maybe Shampoo or Cologne could work the kitchen for once, since they were always so critical of his efforts. 

While he was there, maybe he’d have time to think. To take into consideration whether or not he wanted to come back. Not that he wouldn’t. No. He was sure he would. Definitely. With time away he’d be able to settle any doubts on the matter. Once he wasn’t living within it.

“Hey old ghoul,” 

He was rubbing a growing bump on top of his head before another word could leave his mouth. The Matriarch held a cold gaze to him from her position atop the cane.

“Well, on with it then.”

“I think I’m going to take a vacation soon. Let you two run this place for once.”

He smirked at her. Waiting for her to start negotiating about losing the restaurant’s workhorse. Instead she broke out into a beaming smile, catching him off guard.

“Oh yes yes. How wonderful. Get out, see the world.”

Truthfully, he’d expected more resistance than this. The work he did here kept the business running. Without him they’d have to waste their own time picking up the slack. To be dismissed so casually though, it almost hurt his pride, as much as he hated the job. Almost.

“Maybe even a couple of weeks.” That might just make the old crone sweat. Deep down somewhere he wanted that acknowledgement. To know that he actually meant something of significance to the people that shared his immediate life.

She killed him with kindness.

“Oh heavens yes. In fact, take as long as you’d like.”

Rarely had he found the elder so agreeable. He’d begun wanting leverage and respect, but now found himself uncertain how to proceed the exchange. Still, maybe it wouldn’t do to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it was better to lean into the unexpected response.

“Well you know, if there’s anything back home that Shampoo might need-”

She snapped his words out of the air in a way he was intimately familiar with, her tone proving a bizarre juxtaposition. 

“Nothing that you’re capable of acquiring boy.”

There it was. This was how he’d wanted it in the first place. Truly.

“And just what’s that supposed to mean?”

She regarded him like a dog looking at the sounds coming from a TV whose images it couldn’t parse.

“Well for one, how is it you plan to return home?”

Did she think he was so ignorant? She knew damn well he’d made the journey home countless times.

“Like I can’t find my way back to my own-”

“No no no. How is it that you expect to get back in?”

There was something menacing in that pleasant smile now. He felt his skin go cold, felt it worm through his pores deep into him, sinking hard into his gut. She took him in before elaborating, giving off the feral energy of a cat playing with it’s prey.

“Did you really think? My my my. What do you suppose would happen back home to someone who openly spoke down to or undermined an Elder? Let alone as repeatedly and doggedly as you’ve made habit.”

Jail. Servitude. Exile. Death. All the things the other kids always warned about.

“Why, you should count yourself lucky to learn this lesson here instead of back at the village. At least here you have a life to live out.”

She began pogoing away, stopping just briefly to have a last few words.

“That is, unless you’d like to chance a visit?”

The boy looked on at himself in a mirror across the room, contemplating the life trapped within its confines.

\---

She slipped quietly through the empty restaurant, slinking around obstacles instead of through them, cautiously maneuvering her way up creaking stairs. Exhaling a heavy breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as the door to her room closed behind her.

Quickly and without fanfare, Shampoo slid out of the damaged outfit. Fingers ran over the large tear in the leg of the silk pants as she considered whether it would be possible to save them even with her above average sewing skills. 

Shorts. It was hot. They could be shorts. In some way they’d always be the pants she’d bought excitedly at the market before taking off for Japan, but no matter how elegantly she masked the scars of the journey, she would always know that they were there. 

The lavender haired girl wondered why that thought should cause such a melancholy feeling to swell from her chest, even as she beat it back down with practiced ease.

For a moment, the girl in the simple floor length mirror regarded her own scars. 

Her room was a mystery shop of esoteric looking objects and tools of her trades. Furniture was sparse; a sleeping pad tucked into the corner, a small dresser holding a jade lamp, a desk with an old warhorse of a sewing machine. The dress form next to it was wearing a set of emerald green silks pinned into the rough shape of a romper. On her window sill, a small plush pillow she sometimes splayed on as a cat, letting the sun’s warmth carry her off. A set of naginta, her bonbori, and a few swords rounded out another side of her personality in a corner with a Chinese wooden dummy.

The most interesting part of the girls life occupied the walls. Shelves were lined with a bizarre variety of magical objects. Some obvious, covered in ancient symbols and carved into grotesque forms. Some innocuous, designed to spring like traps on hapless victims. Her grandmother’s knowledge of the occult had carried over to her, starting as an imprinted interest, evolving into a lifestyle. 

Down the stairs she made way toward the small delivery order prepared by Mousse, awaiting her on the counter to the kitchen. Soon she’d be back out the door again, free to take on the streets, rooftops, and anything else she could balance a bike on at a breakneck pace. The destination never her own, but the path and means hers to decide.

A shiver shot through her from the shoulder as she felt the light tap to her person from behind.

Her great grandmother was eyeing her impassively, holding her cane over her lap from atop a freshly polished table.

“You were quite a while on that run granddaughter.” 

“Aiya.”

“Mouse will be leaving tomorrow, and it will be on the two of us to keep things running smoothly. It won’t do for you to be so leisurely in your duties.”

Shampoo regarded the boy pretending not to be eavesdropping from the kitchen. There was something the elder wasn’t saying under the surface of that statement. She knew from a lifetime interacting with the woman, but even still she was rarely able to find the actual meanings on her own.

“Will not happen. Shampoo just have trouble with bike.”

“I suppose that explains the clothes you destroyed. And,” Cologne pointed up at Shampoo’s face. The girl brought her hand up to her cheek, she’d been so sure the foundation had covered. 

“How long have I been training you?” A response started to form on her lips when Cologne cut her off with a gesture. “Don’t answer. It’s more than long enough. For a bike of all things to get the best of you like that.”

Shampoo felt herself bristle at the insult to her pride. After all, her focus wouldn’t have been off if great grandmother wasn’t expecting such unreasonable levels of customer service to Japan’s not so secret bigots. And besides, her body had been sacrificed to save the product of the business. As if the restaurant even mattered as anything more than-

“You were chasing that boy again.” Shampoo felt her blood run cold as the elder seemed to see right into her.

“No chase boy today.” It was a white lie. The girl had come to her.

Cologne’s eyes narrowed. “Did you tell him at least?”

The matriarch took the silence that followed as an answer. She sighed heavily.

“This is your duty to fulfill. My days of babying you are past. The longer you allow this to go on,” The older woman pinched the bridge of her nose, “It’s already shame enough without you continuing to roll around in it.”

She was a mix of hurt and anger, not the least so because she knew she would be meeting with ‘that boy’ tonight. 

“Airen-”

“That boy, great granddaughter. He must know.”

Shampoo pivote and scooped the awaiting order, barely registering the blind boy’s strained face behind the counter while trying to mask her own.

“Bad for business if Shampoo keep talking.”

\---

Ukyo had lost track of Ryoga during the dinner rush. The sudden upswell had overtaken him and pulled him out to sea. He could be halfway to Kyoto by now. Or walking circles in her bathroom.

It was unfortunate really, he could make great company sometimes. Today she hadn’t been so lucky. She’d tried periodically to pop over to him between orders, but his curt responses and body language eventually made it obvious that he’d rather be alone. 

Like spending time with her would’ve been such a hassle in exchange for a free meal.

Pretty soon her irritation was washed away by the surge overtaking her. She had a love hate with these kinds of nights, counting herself lucky that they happened when bills were due, but struggling for air when in the thick of them.

Tonight was such that even her regulars couldn’t hold her attention before she was ripped away, leaving idle stories about family dogs, work woes, and uncertain relationships bobbing along without audience like packages lost at sea.

The chef didn’t notice the spark of red hair in the ocean until it was almost upon her. 

“Ranma-honey!” Ukyo felt a lighthouse burst to life inside her chest at the sight of the other girl. Her eyes traced a quick arc across the grill seats. All the while her hands flew as she kept an eye on her business in her peripherals. 

Ranma gave her a quick look about the room. 

“Busy night?” 

Ukyo nodded in response as she rang out a pair while simultaneously giving signal to a waiting couple to occupy the vacated table.

“Too busy?”

The brunette’s hip cocked, impacting the register drawer closed. At the same time, her foot shot behind her, kicking a spinning plate in a clean arc over her head. She caught it delicately in one hand as her other raced over the grills surface in a smooth motion to deposit the steaming food on the porcelain surface. With a cocky smile and eyes that never wavered from Ranma’s, she launched the order across the room, the package defying physics to land delicately and unmolested in front of a customer who casually started digging in without pause.

“I think I can handle it.” 

Searching out over the din of humanity, she spied the small table Ryoga had vacated. It was close enough. If she couldn’t open up a single seat at the bar she wouldn’t have to stray far whenever things chanced to slow down. 

She nodded over to it. “Take that one, I’ll be over in a bit with the usual.”

Ranma took in the frothing chaos, appearing almost sheepish. Still, after a moment's pause she made her way over to Ryoga’s vacated life raft.

Soon Ukyo lost again in the push and pull, one young woman against the might of the sea. 

Her friend and fiance’s order fell into the queue. It felt as if she was swimming upstream toward it, some such rocky outcropping in the distance where maybe she could find purchase. Even as the distance narrowed, so too did the queue grow, and she knew that this current would be too strong for her to rest long.

Her mind raced over all the things she wanted to say to Ranma. All the things she wanted to share with her that they never quite found the time for. The thoughts and dreams and experiences that she had to keep to herself because there was never anyone appropriate to voice them to. 

Everything under the sun that she said to herself. The running narrative of a lost soul on an island, speaking unheeded truths to the sand and stars.

It hurt, suddenly, to recognize how much she had to say that had only been spoken to herself. To realize she had to organize and prioritize the expression of who she was in lieu of ever finding someone who she could let go and allow the dam to burst over. 

Ukyo held Ranma’s order in her hands, looking down, knowing how much she could say, feeling the weight of this brief opportunity to say it. Uncertain. Anxious. Scared that she should find herself having to place so much importance on something as simple as a meeting with a friend. Scared of the need she felt, the desperate clawing cry for connection that routine kept at bay.

And yet, when she arrived at the redhead’s table, looking down at the girl and the order in her hands, her mind found nothing but a smile. It was met in kind, a slight thing under sad eyes, but such to spark the lighthouse into action once more.

“I was hopin’ ta catch ya in school this week.”

Ukyo searched her memory, had she been out all week? Well, half a week really, they’d started vacaction was it, Wednesday? Thursday? The days had really slid into one another this time. She gestured around the restaurant, suddenly ashamed, willing to lie even to herself.

She laughed. “Been kinda crazy round here sugar. How have you been?”

The redhead’s face was a mask of curiosity. She sidestepped the question.

“Everything ‘kay with you Ukyo?”

The chef placed the food down in front of her fiance, her senses quickly taking stock of various hourglasses running down throughout the space. She waved one hand dismissively as the other fingered the bow tying back her hair.

“You kidding? If things keep up like this I bet I can retire before we graduate!” The other girl gave a half-hearted smile at the statement. Ukyo pushed forward. “I missed anything monumental? Or just the same old bombs going off?”

It took a moment for her to register the lack of tact in the question, but she could see the immediate reaction on the redhead’s face. Inside she sunk. That she could find opportunity so important but use it nonetheless to say the worst possible thing.

Ranma, to her credit, chose not to address the slip. 

“Been a weird week Ucchan.” Somewhere an alarm began to sound in the back of Ukyo’s head. A table of four fiddling with jackets and purses. “Like the world’s gettin’ turned upside down. Shook out.”

Her attention was divided, increasingly, not fully taking in the words but merely throwing them in line for eventual processing. 

“Listen, I know this ain’t a good time. I just-”

Ukyo’s hand came up, halting the other girl.

“No no no, it’s fine honey. Just hold that thought till I can get a handle on all this.”

With that she was carried away, the group at the register transitioning into a new flood of life from the door, into a series of new orders from the bar. Here a spill, there a table to be cleared, everywhere an order to be filled. In the midst of it all, a small spitfire of a girl hovering patiently over an empty plate, occasionally sending furtive glances between the overstretched chef and a clock on the far wall.

The sea beat down on her and she fought it to a standstill, the lighthouse inside of her forever turning to cast light on the spot of red in the distance.

It was endless.

Relentless.

They were two souls, trapped on adjacent islands separated by shark infested waters, looking out over the horizon for a message in a bottle.

Something in the chef started to break at the injustice. At the simple thing being denied to her. At how much that simple thing should mean and that she should have to be in such a position to give it so much meaning.

Her lighthouse sank into the sea as she watched the girl take one last look at the clock before removing herself from her seat. It was as she drowned in the roar of breaking waves that she heard the redhead speak.

“I’m sorry Ucchan. I can’t stay.”

Some force from beyond let Ukyo know that those words held so much left unsaid. She removed herself from her work, even still tipping over a collection of mental hourglasses.

“It’s no big deal sugar. Another time.”

The smaller girl looked down at the floor, bangs masking a concerned expression.

“Yeah. We’ll talk another time. Just,” Ranma cocked her head at Ukyo, twin blues contemplating. “Take care of yourself alright?”

Ukyo couldn’t understand the tone coming from the girl in front of her. Why this moment should feel so important, as if something in the very air around them had changed. As if the lights had turned up.

Ranma paused briefly to smile up at her before turning to go. Even as the hourglasses started to wind down Ukyo found her hand taking hold of the other girls. They regarded one another through spyglasses from opposite shores.

“Ranma. Is something wrong?”

And over the roar, even as alarm bells rang in the space around her, even as it all threatened to swallow her up, she could read a confused torrent of things unsaid in the other girl’s eyes.

“S’fine Ucchan. I’ll be back.” 

The chef found them pulling away from one another as either caught separate riptides. 

“Just remember that. I promise.”

Once again she was adrift at sea.

\---

Lavender and crimson.

Soft lips and milky skin.

A moment she hadn’t been meant to bear witness to.

Cobalt tendrils snapping through the air as Akane shook the image from her head once again. 

From across the busy subway terminal her two friends stood waving her on, dressed fashionably casual alike for today’s outing. Two girls. Akane stuffed down image, anger, and anxieties to return the wave, entering a playful jog toward Yuka and Sayuri.

“Heya! You two look good.”

They did. Really.

Sayuri cooed, slipping into a pose as Yuka mirrored it ironically behind her.

“Only the best for girls night!” 

“Yeah! Now let's get moving and find something so nice it makes these clothes look like trash.”

Akane smiled inside as the lot of them slipped into their usual chatter about school, home, gossip, and hobbies. They were transported into the night ahead of them by an escalator, at the end of whose tunnel shone a cacophony of fluorescent lights.

From each of their arms paper bags draped, ordained in the couture logos and photospreads of the most chic storefronts they dared to enter. The three were all smiles, radiating energy around them in an aura of positive light. 

Akane’s mind had long let go of the image of her fiance with the amazon from earlier that afternoon, locked it away, taking care to keep an eye on the key regardless. 

It was, however, a law of her universe that any good mood she was in, Ranma would find a way to ruin. Yuka was looking on her with a characteristic shit eating grin that forever meant trouble.

“Soo. Seems like your sister and your fiance.” She paused, allowing Akane to take the meaning. When the bait was left hanging she continued. “They’ve been spending a weird amount of time together lately huh?”

Sayuri squealed, knowing that they were about to play one of their favorite games. Just how much could they get Akane to admit to about her fiance?

“Uggh, no. Don’t. Those two hate each other and you all know it.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know. They’ve been talking about Aunty a lot. So it’s probably got to do with Ranma asking Nabiki for help with…”

Akane dropped the thought as she started to stray into uncomfortable territory. Even with her best friends, she’d found herself talking around the wedding day, skipping and dodging, but never fully addressing it. Despite their nature as provacatours, they’d respectfully left it to her to broach.

“Besides, I know my sister. She wouldn’t go for. You know, his curse.”

Yuka’s grin looked like it could split her face in half. “Oh yeah? And I suppose you would?”

Akane flushed. “Well, no! It’s just, he’s stuck with it.”

“And you like him enough to deal with it?”

Akane groaned. “No!”

“Well. I tell you, if that’s a stipulation for getting a guy like Ranma I think I’d be okay with it.” Sayuri piped up.

She regarded her friend like she’d just grown a second head. Sayuri was? Like that? Was she just fooling around again? 

Yuka cocked her head up at the billboards overhead, her hands behind her head.

“You know, I guess I would too.”

A sense of unique uncomfortableness flowed through the blue haired girl’s body. Her world suddenly didn’t seem to make rational sense anymore. What if they were all like that? Every last one. A animalistic tug of irrational anger tore through her body as she considered the pervert pied piper at the center of it all.

From deep inside of herself she listened to the two of her friends push the envelope of the conversation, trying in vain to elicit a reaction from her. So preoccupied was she with the rush of thoughts in her head she failed to allow their teasing to affect her. 

With a concerned look in Akane’s direction, Yuka switched gears to take the heat off of her.

“How are you gonna bag Ranma-kun when you’re hanging all over Yoshi like a hungry dog?”

“Oh shut the hell up!”

And so the conversation shifted, and Akane came back to being. Three friends laughing together on a warm summer night.

Subway doors opened on three weary but cheerful girls. Soft amber spheres of light guided them from the terminal, mingling with pale blue moonlight and the rainbow of electricity still scattered sporadically around the back streets of their daily lives. 

Akane spun under a street lamp to face her friends. Something in her didn’t want to go home yet.

“Anyone else hungry?”

Sayuri began to speak up before being cut off by a rolling growl pulsing out from Yuka’s stomach. “Well! Where to then?”

“I don’t know about you guys, but I could EAT.”

“Clearly Yuka.”

“What about Ucchans? It’s close.”

Akane glared at Sayuri. “Really?”

Sayuri looked incredulously at the blue haired girl. “Yeah really. Why not?”

“Yeah, why not?” Yuka dropped in.

“I don’t see why you two have to keep picking on me.” 

“Ugggh. Look girl, Ukyo is good people. Sorry.”

“And her food is tops!”

“But her and Ranma are always! You two are the ones that let me know all the time.”

Unconsciously their bodies had already started moving on the path to the young chef’s restaurant. Akane had been here before with the other two. They did genuinely like the other girl, and Akane guessed she didn’t quite hate her either. 

“Besides, she’s been way absent lately.”

“Habitually. Like even when she’s there she’s kinda...not there.”

Akane thought about that. Truthfully, at first it had been a bit of a relief to have her rival taking so much time away. But they were right, something seemed to have changed. Like she’d stopped putting up a fight anymore. 

“No guys, it’s fine. It’d be nice to know she’s doing okay.”

Yuka and Sayuri exchanged a smile, both aware that they’d won this particular battle almost from the start. Appealing to Akane’s compassion was a magic bullet to move the other girl.

“Good! I’m gonna get the shrimp, or- No! The bacon. Wait. The bacon, AND the shrimp!”

Akane smirked as she watched Yuka’s stomach take off with her mouth. It might do well to find some sort of allegiance in this weird game they were stuck in. Besides, even if Ukyo couldn’t exactly be a friend, she was still a human being. Maybe her absence was by way of entrepreneurial success, or maybe they signaled something the girl wasn’t asking for help with. It didn’t hurt to be sure. It didn’t hurt to check.

“...and if I get three, I can divide everything up into pairs with the bacon to see what the best one is.”

They turned the corner, finding the warm glow of Ucchans spilling down the street. From the large front windows they could make out the bustle of life inside the building. Signs of success in population density. 

As they closed in, Akane could even make out the chef herself. Her small hands held the smaller hands of a girl in front of her. Their eyes mimicking the gesture.

It hurt to check.

Akane pivoted on her two friends.

“You know what? FUCK Ukyo.”

\---

Amsterdam. No, Cairo. He definitely knew it wasn’t space. Again.

“Urgh, I knew I should have just waited.” Ryoga tapped the bottom of his fist lightly against a passing lamp post. As he continued walking, from behind him the pole cracked across and doubled over itself, crashing without ceremony through a wall across the street. 

The lost boy noticed none of this, ripped only from his inner monologue by an irritated voice behind him.

“Ryoga you jackass! Why you gotta be like a damn boar in a china shop?!”

There, standing atop rubble amidst the hole he’d inadvertently created, Ranma Saotome stared sharply up the block at him.

“Ranma!? How did you find me in Amsterdam?”

He watched the other boy pinch his nose, looking down. “You really believe that crap coming out of you mouth or is it just some sort of catchphrase now?”

A growl ripped through him. “What crawled up your ass today!?”

The pigtailed boy gestured wide armed at the destruction under his feet, an exaggerated look of mock incredulity parading over his face.

“What do ya think, you hardhead? Now what’s bothering you this time ya gotta crash in on me like this?”

Ryoga closed the distance between the two, embedding the tip of his umbrella in the ground and leveling a finger at Ranma.

“Nothin’s bothing me!”

The two stood tensed and glaring at one another. Statues of great warriors carved in stone standing atop the remains of a long malfunctioning street lamp.

“You wanna fight about it?”

He felt the anger fall out of him at the earnesty in his rivals question. His perennial solution to life’s problems. For once though.

“Not tonight.”

Ranma’s curiosity piqued, but it didn’t appear in him to try to goad a conflict onward.

“Then what’re you here for? Or you just feel like doing your version of ding dong ditch tonight?”

“I didn’t come here for you Saotome.” Ryoga spat, following Ranma into the compound and the dojo beyond. “I came to see Akane.”

He watched the other boy’s shoulders tense upward.

“Come on Ryoga. When you gonna drop it man?” 

“She’s my friend too!”

“Oh yeah, s’that why you’re always sleeping in the same dang bed as her? 

“She’s one of the few people I know that actually listens to me.”

Ranma sighed at him. Their argument was circular and played out. 

“You got someone like that already. Can’t you just count yourself lucky someone as lost as you actually managed to find someone?”

Ryoga bristled at the mention of Akari. He hadn’t come here to talk with Ranma about her. 

He’d come here to talk with Akane about her.

“She’s. It’s not.”

He hated the look of compassion the pigtailed boy slid into. This wasn’t the person he wanted condolences from. This was his rival, and anything he volunteered to him was just a potential weapon to use against him in the future.

“Look dude. I’m sorry, if-”

Rage shot through him like a volcanic uprising. This asshole owed him everything but pity.

“No one asked you! Don’t you dare think I want pity from a scumbag like you!”

He could see the same rage he felt carry over on psychic currents into the Saotome heir. As it did, and as they returned to form with one another, he suddenly felt much more comfortable. At ease in the fury.

“Oh yeah! Well ya think maybe she dumped ya cause you couldn’t stop obsessing over MY fiance P-Chan!?”

A wave of shame swept through him, acting as nothing more than tinder to fuel the inferno inside. Deep down he knew. She had said. It was no one’s fault he could pin blame on but his own, so he did the only thing that made sense. 

He blamed Ranma.

“If you’d just make a damn decision already everyone could move on. Do you want her or not?”

“It’s complicated and you know it!”

“Oh sure, like you don’t just enjoy stringing all of them along. Reaping the benefits while everyone else has to deal with the fallout.”

“Is your head on straight? Like I know you ain’t here cept to ogle chicks like a damn pig, but it ain’t my fault all this is so…” Ranma paused to find his words as Ryoga clenched his fingernails into the surface of his palms. “Sides, I’m working on somethin’.”

“Ah ha! I knew it! You can end all of this whenever you want, but you just love the attention.”

“That’s not it! It’s just if I know how to end it. Like should I? What if she wants?”

Ranma’s dilemma suddenly made perfect sense to Ryoga. 

“So you’re holding her hostage.”

“No! You jackass, do the words get lost in there too? Maybe you finally get your stupid chance tonight. Maybe not ever.”

He thought back to all those nights he’d laid there, drifting off to sleep as Akane talked out her fears and desires. How often Ranma came up. How she really felt about the Saotome heir. 

“How could you dare hurt Akane like that!?”

Ranma looked like he might scream himself hoarse.

“Kami please! Do you want me to marry her or dump her? What the hell is it!?”

“I want her to be happy you bastard!” 

Ryoga was fed up with the circling and verbal sparring they’d been up to. He lunged toward the pigtailed boy in a flying haymaker.

Faster than he could process, Ranma flipped backward and away from him, impacting and rebounding off the wall and over his head. By the time Ryoga swung around, a bucket of cold soapy water was already impacting him square in the chest.

He looked up as his rival bent down to pick him and and set them eye to eye. His tiny legs jerked in a furious display. Ranma’s stare was half lidded, checked out. 

“Nope. Not tonight P-Chan.”

With that, Ryoga found himself soaring over the wall of the Tendo compound.

\---

The front door to the Tendo home shook from the force of it’s closing, signaling the return of the household’s youngest charge. 

Akane balanced a collection of bags from her arms as she removed her shoes, careful not to tip a take-away box as she did so. Most of her meal was inside. 

Her friends had quickly settled on other accommodations once Ucchan’s was off the table, but Akane had been mentally elsewhere. By the time the check had come, her food was barely picked over, and for the life of her she couldn’t recall the conversation her friends had been forced to have with one another in her absence. 

She wanted to let it go. She wanted his actions to stop hurting her. To stop having to feel so hard in lieu of ever expecting his behavior to change. It hurt so much to be given reason to feel so angry all the time. To look back at herself, enraged and out of control once again. 

All she wanted right then was to disappear up to her room. To avoid seeing the boy that was destroying her so that she didn’t embarrass herself again.

Walking past the kitchen, she spotted said boy’s mother, deep in conversation with his father and her own. The table was decorated with a smattering of official looking documents, their faces with somber expressions. Kasumi caught her eye on route to deliver a tray of tea and small snack foods.

“Oh good Akane, welcome home! Would you mind fetching Ranma for me?”

Inside her gut twisted into a knot. Tonight. He’d mentioned his mother visiting tonight. Her teeth grinded into one another, knowing she was stuck on rails, that she’d have to try and hold herself together and maintain some sense of formality with their guest. At least for a few hours. 

She could handle it. Keep it all in check. It was nothing she hadn’t had to process before, she should be used to these mundane indignities by now. Besides, saying no to Kasumi wasn’t something she could bring herself to do.

“No problem sis. He’s?”

“Out back. I think his friend Ryoga is with him.”

She smiled at that a bit. Ryoga wasn’t around often. He was one of the few men she knew that she felt comfortable talking with. When he wasn’t being goaded into fighting with Ranma, he was usually full of interesting stories about the places he’d been and the people he’d met.

Unfortunately, from the sounds of it as she zeroed in on the two, they were playing out things with one another as they typically did. She could feel the vein on her forehead begin to throb, knowing she was about to have to break up a fight between the two for the nth time.

“-you want me to marry her or dump her? What the hell is it!?”

“I want her to be happy you bastard!” 

Akane rounded the corner to the sight of Ryoga launching himself in a screaming bullrush at Ranma. Both boys attention was so fixed on one another they neither registered her approach.

Ranma flowed effortlessly away from the lost boy, looking so very detached as he did so. In an instant he’d rebounded off the wall and taken an arc over the overextended opponent. She watched him land by a bucket of soapy water and brush. For a moment she wondered if Ranma was planning to activate his curse as she watched him bend to pick it up. What kind of game was he playing at this time? 

Ryoga spun to face Ranma as the water soared from the bucket to strike him. Akane’s temporary confusion gave way to a feeling of total numbness as a high pitched ringing filled her head. Ranma picked up the piglet and said something she couldn’t hear to it before tossing the animal - the boy, Ryoga, P-Chan - high and hard over the walls of the Tendo compound.

She watched as Ranma sat, his back facing away from her, still unaware of his fiance’s presence. The ringing in her ears got louder and louder as she mapped the contours of his back like a silent cartographer. 

Ryoga. 

Ryoga was P-Chan.

Ranma knew Ryoga was P-Chan.

Her eyes scrunched in effort to hold back the tidal wave of feelings flowing back into her. 

This boy. She’d almost married him. He knew. She had been in the dark and he’d allowed for it. And the other boy. She thought she could at least trust.

Suddenly her mind was flooded with a history of thinly veiled remarks and bizarre behaviors centering around the boy she’d almost married and the lost boy she thought she could trust. 

All those stupid comments Ranma had made about the pig, seemingly designed to incense her. Taunting her. Taunting Ryoga. He’d been content to let her play the hapless fool for so long. Let his biggest rival invade her privacy for the sake of, what? His own amusement at her continued humiliation? Just another humiliation, drawn out and stacked on so many countless others. And the pig.

It was almost too much to bear trying to remember all the pig had been there for. Her brain searched furtively over years of memories. All those things she’d said. All the things she’d done in front of this traitor in her midst. He’d seen so much. He knew too much. She suppressed a shudder.

Her throat constricted. She didn’t know if she wanted to cry or scream. The betrayal. It was all he ever did to her. All anyone ever seemed to do to her. She wanted to curl up into a ball and die. She wanted to thrash and scream and compound her humiliation. Dig dig dig, lose herself in the hole she was falling into. A hole in her heart that was opening wider and wider by the passing moments, swallowing her up.

The boy no one had ever really asked her if she wanted to be engaged to turned around. A small smile lit on his face as he recognized her. She watched him mouth ‘hey Akane’ and something inside her broke.

She had been hiding inside the eye of the storm, sheltered from the fury of the hurricane force winds all around her. She allowed herself to fall into them.

One of the dojos thick support beams imploded into itself as Akane’s fist shot outward. A roar like a tortured animal resonated guttural up from within her with an involuntary force like she was going to vomit up bile. Ranma’s eyes went wide as dinner plates as he reflexively rose to his feet, hands out in front of him as if facing down the terror of a hungry jungle cat. She could see his lips moving in the red haze, but the ringing was now a physical thing drowning out all other sensations. Dimly she was aware that her hand may have broken from the impact. Whatever he was saying, she spoke over him.

“YOU KNEW. THIS WHOLE TIME.”

Her body cleared the space between them in three steps that impacted like falling stars. His collar was in her hands as his defenses fell away. A second support beam was stamped with a Ranma shaped hole as she slammed him mightily into it.

“The pig. The fucking pig.” She spat the words as if she was spitting blood. “He slept in my fucking room! HE SAW ME. HE SAW ALL OF ME YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH AND YOU KNEW!” With every word she felt like she was going to be sick. 

Ranma started stammering something and she cut him off by flinging him into the opposite wall. She was back on him before he had any chance to recover.

“The girls weren’t enough!? All the shit you throw at me that I have to figure out how to choke down?!” She could feel the hot tears running down her face now, the blood running from her broken hand to her forearm.

Her fists found openings all over his body. Somewhere it occurred to her, that even now, as she made her best effort to break his body like he had broken her spirit, that he still wasn’t going to fight back. 

“Why can’t you just respect me?! Why?! WHY?! Am I just some fucking toy for you to play with?!” She was over top of him, raining blood and spit and blows down on him. She grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking him into the floor, his head cracking back into the boards with emphasis to her words.

“WHY DO YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE THIS? WHY DO I EVEN CARE ANYMORE?! WHY CAN’T YOU JUST STOP?!” She hiccuped. “Why can’t everyone just stop already?”

Her chin was drawn to her chest, eyes no longer able to meet his.

“I don’t wanna be like this anymore…”

Blood, sweat, and tears rained down in slow motion onto the face of the boy she had almost married. She was still fighting inside for control, despite outward appearances. Her heart thudded in a bass rhythm driving the piercing ring in the back of her head. Her breathing was the ragged sobs of a bad night out on the town, facing down some unfamiliar commode, praying for a release from the filth.

When the small hand touched her shoulder, it took all the control she had not to let her reflexes take over. Not to let the tortured animal lash out and maul whatever the next stupid evil thing was that sought to drag her screaming into a corner. 

Her vision shifted from a deep red to the coldest blue when she met the concerned eyes of Nodoka Saotome. They moved from hers to her son’s in a cautious rhythm. Standing behind her, agape in the collapsing doorway, her father and his. The surrogate mother that was once her sister.

“Ranma,” she began, “Akane. I’d hoped that tonight we could have the chance to sit together. I see now that the situation is worse than I’d suspected.”

Despite the mess of his face, Akane could see his expression drop. Despair. Pleading. Fear. A mix of strangled emotion hidden behind a tableau of bruises and blood.

She felt herself lifted up and away from her fiance by the strong assertive arms of her father.

“It has recently been brought to my attention, the powers I possess in these matters. Legal powers.” Her soft concerned gaze hardened like hot steel meeting water, piercing through her husband. “I loved your mother Akane. God, we all did. In many ways maybe it was that love that clouded us all.”

The iron willed matriarch of the Saotome clan bent down to her son.

“Our love has blinded us. The Saotome and Tendo names have been joined in all but law since long before her passing.”

There it was, that cold hollow feeling. Dread. A building tension, a flashing of memories all suddenly tying together in an instant. Suddenly Akane knew what the boy had wanted her for tonight. 

And like that, shame and humiliation threatened to overtake her once more, to drag her down from a pit inside of her own heart. She was blindfolded, swinging, surrounded by those she thought she could trust. Paraded around like a clown. Doomed to keep failing tests she had no awareness she was even part of. Again and again.

Nodoka produced a neat packet of documents from within her antiquated robe. In another world Akane may have been amused by the juxtaposition. 

“And our two families will forever be joined. But not like this. Not at the expense of our children. I will not stand by and watch her memory be tainted like that.” A dainty hand held out a robust lighter. “I’m sorry Ranma. I’m sorry Akane.”

The flame burned symbolic, washing over the paradigm that was their days. And maybe that was all it was, a symbol. Some unnecessary pageantry. But to each life in the space, eyes drawn like a wayward soul through twilight fog, flames roared and seared the eyes, threatened to overtake the senses. 

Akane felt like she may have snapped her father in the jaw in an effort to escape his grasp. His embrace. The embrace of a man clinging to a life raft like a last memory, dying and adrift at sea. All she knew was that she needed to get away. To run. It was too much to be there in front of all of them. In front of herself.

She barreled recklessly through the house on her way up to her room. The only place she’d wanted to be tonight in the first place. She needed to scream, to cry, to thrash and tear and curl into herself so hard she disappeared.

Down the hall she spotted her sister’s light. 

She needed to talk with someone.

Someone who hadn’t been there. Hadn’t seen her.

The door slid open silently. She didn’t knock.

And there, the curious sight of her middle sister lost in thought, a large pair of headphones blocking out the chaos of the world. Under her contemplative expression, a copy of the documents she’d just watched set ablaze, two pictures of the boy she had almost married. The girl she had almost married.

Before Nabiki could even register her presence, Akane knew she couldn’t be here. Felt the crash of memory hit her again like a fist to the gut. Over and over and over again, even as she lay downed and crying out. Another secret slight against the girl too naive to know any better.

There was no safe haven here. 

Akane ran into the night.

\---

From the small musty room everyone knew was a closet, black hair rained down over the possessions destined for a pack on the floor.

In the din of sepia into black his eyes moved over the contents of a handwritten letter. Chinese lettering. Neat script. An echo from the past saying he could go the moon if he wanted. They’d always be there to watch him.

To cheer him on from afar. No matter how far.

A heart burst in the solitude of the night.

\---

The too too big turtle glowed a subdued gold against the sea green expanse of a park no longer filled with waking life. From atop its shell purple locks lapped at the night air.

Anyone could see she was done up in her best. 

But no one would.

\---

Three figures stared out at a collapsing past, beyond toward a shaky future. Two desperately holding together hearts, one holding the cold wetness of an ice pack to his jaw.

From behind, the echo of a mother holding the six ringed release of an amber liquid.

And as they three sipped, so too did she.

\---

The fairy queen regarding the boy she’d ordained to save. Lit offhand by the harsh white light of a desk lamp projecting down on uncertain goals.

Two hands met as each moved to squirrel away his meager possessions. Their eyes locked over top the pack he’d have to carry forward.

Neither moved and neither would.

\---

The room was covered in the carefully curated life the one who occupied it never seemed to have the chance to live. 

An empty bottle and a cord lead away to a handset at her ear.

“Dad? It’s Ukyo. Again. I don’t know if you’re not getting these. I’m-i’m doing well though. I’m doing really well. Business is great and I just. I know so many people. I wish I could tell you about all of them. I wish-I wish you- I miss you daddy.”

The girl in the sinking bow pulled hard at a drink gripped hard as if a life preserver in uncertain seas.

\---

Out in the moonlit expanse they found one another. One lost boy and one lost girl.

He was confused, but elated.

She was fury.

“Akane?”

Her eyes were hard, piercing the soft tissue of his heart.

“Do you really want me to be happy?”

And even as he made the connection, as he put together the implications behind that statement, he knew his answer.

He held her crying in his arms as she unwittingly had for him. So many times over.

\---

From the author:

If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading! To date, this work and especially this chapter are probably the most ambitious things I’ve ever written. When it dawned on me how long this might get after outlining it, I never thought I would finish. Even after the first draft was down it still felt like a mountain. I hope no one minds. After focusing so much on Nabiki and Ranma in the first two chapters, I felt like I really needed to do the rest of the cast some justice and raise them out of one dimensional status. At the moment I’m prepping my first big art show, so this may be dormant for a bit while I’m slinging paint, but I’m having a lot of fun writing it so I’ll try and be back ASAP. Hopefully you’re having as much fun reading as I am writing. Feedback, it’s forever appreciated!


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